Following
Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U.
S. 623,
held that a State has the right to
prohibit or restrict the manufacture of intoxicating liquors within
its limits, to prohibit all sale and traffic in them in the state,
to inflict penalties for such manufacture and sale, and to provide
regulations for the abatement, as a common nuisance, of the
property used for such forbidden purposes, and that such
legislation does not abridge the liberties or immunities of
citizens of the United States nor deprive any person of property
without due process of law, nor contravene the provisions of the
Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.
A statute of a state which provides (1) that foreign
intoxicating liquors may be imported into the State, and there kept
for sale by the importer in the original packages or for
transportation in such packages and sale beyond the limits of the
state; and (2) that intoxicating liquors may be manufactured and
sold within the State for mechanical, medicinal, culinary, and
sacramental purposes, but for no other, not even for the purpose of
transportation beyond the limits of the state -- does not conflict
with Section 8, Article I, of the Constitution of the United States
by undertaking to regulate commerce among the states.
The right of a state to enact a statute prohibiting the
manufacture of intoxicating liquors within its limits is not
affected by the fact that the manufacturer of such spirits intends
to export them when manufactured.
The police power of a state is as broad and plenary as the
taxing power (as defined in
Coe v. Errol, 116 U.
S. 517), and property within the state is subject to the
operation of the former so long as it is within the regulating
restrictions of the latter.
Page 128 U. S. 2
The case, as stated by the Court, was as follows:
This is a writ of error to the Supreme Court of the State of
Iowa, allowed by the Chief Justice thereof upon the ground that the
judgment in the case affirmed the validity of a statute of that
state, which the plaintiff in error claimed to be in conflict with
the federal Constitution. The case arose upon a petition in equity
filed December 24, 1885, in the Circuit Court of Polk County, Iowa,
by defendants in error, I. E. Pearson and S. J. Loughran, against
the plaintiff in error, J. S. Kidd, praying that a certain
distillery, erected and used by said Kidd for the unlawful
manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors, be abated as a
nuisance, and that the said Kidd be perpetually enjoined from the
manufacture therein of all intoxicating liquors. The provisions of
the law under which these proceedings were instituted are found in
chapter 6, Title 11, of the Code Iowa, amended by chapter 143 of
the acts of the General Assembly in 1884. The sections necessary to
be quoted for the purposes of this decision are as follows:
Section 1523 provides:
"No person shall manufacture or sell by himself, his clerk,
steward, or agent, directly or indirectly, any intoxicating liquors
except as hereinafter provided, and the keeping of intoxicating
liquors with intent on the part of the owner thereof or any person
acting under his authority or by his permission to sell the same
within this state contrary to the provisions of this chapter is
hereby prohibited, and the intoxicating liquor so kept, together
with the vessels in which it is contained, is declared a nuisance,
and shall be forfeited and dealt with as hereinafter provided."
Section 1524 provides:
"Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to forbid the sale
by the importer thereof of foreign intoxicating liquor imported
under the authority of the laws of the United States regarding the
importation of such liquors and in accordance of [with] such laws,
provided that the said liquor at the time of said sale by said
importer remains in the original casks or packages in which it was
by him imported, and in quantities not less than the quantities in
which the laws of the United States require such liquors to be
imported, and is
Page 128 U. S. 3
sold by him in said original casks or packages and in said
quantities only, and nothing contained in this law shall prevent
any persons from manufacturing in this state liquors for the
purpose of being sold according to the provisions of this chapter,
to be used for mechanical, medicinal, culinary, or sacramental
purposes."
Section 1525 prescribes a penalty for a violation of the law by
manufacturers, as follows:
"Every person who shall manufacture any intoxicating liquors as
in this chapter prohibited shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor,
and upon his first conviction for said offense shall pay a fine of
two hundred dollars and costs of prosecution or be imprisoned in
the county jail not to exceed six months, and on his second and
every subsequent conviction for said offense, he shall pay a fine
of not less that five hundred dollars nor more than one thousand
dollars and costs of prosecution, and be imprisoned in the county
jail one year."
Section 1526 defines who may be permitted to manufacture under
the law, and for what purpose the manufacture may be carried on, as
follows:
"Any citizen of the state except hotel keepers, keepers of
saloons, eating houses, grocery keepers, and confectioners is
hereby permitted, within the county of his residence, to
manufacture or buy and sell intoxicating liquors for mechanical,
medicinal, culinary, or sacramental purposes only, provided he
shall first obtain permission from the board of supervisors of the
county in which such business is conducted, as follows."
Sections 1527 and 1529 provide for the manner of obtaining the
permit, and § 1530 sets out the conditions under which it may be
granted. It is as follows:
"At such final hearing, any resident of the county may appear
and show cause why such permit should not be granted, and the same
shall be refused unless the board shall be fully satisfied that all
the requirements of the law have, in all respects, been fully
complied with; that the applicant is a person of good moral
character, and that, taking into consideration the wants of the
locality and the number of permits already granted, such permit
would be necessary and proper for the accommodation of the
neighborhood. "
Page 128 U. S. 4
The manufacturer, like the seller, is required to make monthly
reports to the county auditor, the evident purpose of the
requirement being to show whether or not the holder of a permit was
manufacturing or selling in compliance with the law.
Section 1543 provides for proceedings in equity to abate and
enjoin unlawful manufacture.
The averments of the petition are in substance that the
distillery described therein was erected by said J. S. Kidd for the
manufacture of intoxicating liquors, contrary to the statute of
Iowa; that said Kidd had been, ever since the 4th of July, 1884,
and is still, engaged in the manufacture of intoxicating liquors
upon the premises aforesaid for other than mechanical, medicinal,
culinary, and sacramental purposes, with the concluding
averment
"that the defendant manufactures, keeps for sale, and sells
within this state and at the place aforesaid intoxicating liquors
to be taken out of that state and there used as a beverage and for
other purposes than for mechanical, medicinal, culinary, and
sacramental purposes, contrary to the statute of Iowa."
Kidd in his answer specifically pleaded that he is now, and has
been ever since the 4th of July, 1884, authorized by the board of
supervisors to manufacture and sell intoxicating liquors, except as
prohibited by law, and that in the manufacture and sale of liquors,
this defendant has at all times complied with the requirements of
the law in that behalf. Upon the trial it was proved by undisputed
evidence that Kidd held each year from July 4, 1884, a permit,
regularly issued from the Board of Supervisors of Polk County
covering the period of the alleged violations of law, authorizing
him to manufacture and sell intoxicating liquors for mechanical,
medicinal, culinary, and sacramental purposes; that his monthly
reports, made on oath, in compliance with the requirements of the
law, show that there were no sales for mechanical, medicinal,
culinary, and sacramental, or any other purpose, in the State of
Iowa, and that all the manufactured liquors were for exportation,
and were sold outside of the State of Iowa. A decree was rendered
against Kidd ordering that the said distillery
Page 128 U. S. 5
be abated as a nuisance according to the prayer of the
petitioner, and enjoining said Kidd from the manufacture therein of
any and all intoxicating liquors. On appeal to the Supreme Court of
Iowa, this decree was affirmed by that court. Hence this writ of
error.
Page 128 U. S. 15
MR. JUSTICE LAMAR, after stating the facts as above, delivered
the opinion of the Court.
The Supreme Court of Iowa, in its opinion, a copy of which, duly
authenticated, is found in the record, having been transmitted
according to our eighth rule of practice, held the sections in
question to mean: (1) that foreign intoxicating liquors might be
imported into the state, and there kept for sale by the importer in
the original packages, or for transportation in such packages and
sale beyond the limits of the state; (2) that intoxicating liquors
might be manufactured and sold within the state for mechanical,
medicinal, culinary, and sacramental purposes, but for no other --
not even for the purpose of transportation beyond the limits of the
state; (3) that the statute, thus construed, raised no conflict
with the Constitution of the United States, and was therefore
valid.
As the record presents none of the exceptional conditions which
sometimes impel this Court to disregard inadmissible constructions
given by state courts to even their own state statutes and state
constitutions, we shall adopt the construction of the statute of
Iowa under consideration which has been given it by the Supreme
Court of that state.
The questions, then, for this Court to determine are: (1) does
the statute as thus construed conflict with Section 8, Article I,
of the Constitution of the United States by undertaking to regulate
commerce between the states, and (2) does it conflict with the
Fourteenth Amendment to that Constitution by depriving the owners
of the distillery of their property therein without "due process of
law." All of the assignments of error offered are but variant
statements of one or the other of these two propositions.
The second of the propositions has been disposed of by this
Page 128 U. S. 16
Court in the case of
Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U.
S. 623, wherein this very question was raised upon a
statute similar in all essential respects to the provisions of the
Iowa Code whose validity is contested. The Court decided that a
state has the right to prohibit or restrict the manufacture of
intoxicating liquors within her limits; to prohibit all sale and
traffic in them in said state; to inflict penalties for such
manufacture and sale, and to provide regulations for the abatement
as a common nuisance of the property used for such forbidden
purposes, and that such legislation by a state is a clear exercise
of her undisputed police power, which does not abridge the
liberties or immunities of citizens of the United States nor
deprive any person of property without due process of law, nor in
any way contravenes any provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment of
the Constitution of the United States. Upon the authority of that
case and of the numerous cases cited in the opinion of the Court,
we concur in the decision of the Iowa courts that the provisions
here in question are not in conflict with the said amendment. The
only question before us, therefore, is as to the relation of the
Iowa statutes to the regulation of commerce among the states.
The line which separates the province of federal authority over
the regulation of commerce from the powers reserved to the states
has engaged the attention of this Court in a great number and
variety of cases. The decisions in these cases, though they do not
in a single instance assume to trace that line throughout its
entire extent or to state any rule further than to locate the line
in each particular case as it arises, have almost uniformly adhered
to the fundamental principles which Chief Justice Marshall, in the
case of
Gibbons v.
Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, laid down as to the nature and
extent of the grant of power to Congress on this subject, and also
of the limitations, express and implied, which it imposes upon
state legislation with regard to taxation, to the control of
domestic commerce, and to all persons and things within its limits
of purely internal concern. According to the theory of that great
opinion, the supreme authority in this country is divided between
the government
Page 128 U. S. 17
of the United States, whose action extends over the whole union,
but which possesses only certain powers enumerated in its written
Constitution, and the separate governments of the several states,
which retain all powers not delegated to the union. The power
expressly conferred upon Congress to regulate commerce is absolute
and complete in itself, with no limitations other than are
prescribed in the constitution; is to a certain extent exclusively
vested in Congress, so far free from state action; is coextensive
with the subject on which it acts, and cannot stop at the external
boundary of a state, but must enter into the interior of every
state whenever required by the interests of commerce with foreign
nations or among the several states. This power, however, does not
comprehend the purely internal domestic commerce of a state, which
is carried on between man and man within a state or between
different parts of the same state.
The distinction is stated in the following comprehensive
language:
"The genius and character of the whole government seem to be
that its action is to be applied to all the external concerns of
the nation, and to those internal concerns which affect the states
generally, but not to those which are completely within a
particular state, which do not affect other states, and with which
it is not necessary to interfere for the purpose of executing some
of the general powers of the government. The completely internal
commerce of a state, them, may be considered as reserved for the
state itself."
Page
22 U. S. 195.
Referring to certain laws of state legislatures which had a
remote and considerable influence on commerce, the Court said that
the acknowledged power of the state to regulate its police, its
domestic trade, and to govern its own people may enable it to
legislate over this subject to a great extent, but these and other
state laws of the same kind are not considered as an exercise of
the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the
several states or enacted with a view to it, but, on the contrary,
are considered as flowing from the acknowledged power of a state to
provide for the safety and welfare of its people, and form a part
of that legislation which
Page 128 U. S. 18
embraces everything within the territory of a state not
surrendered to the general government. Sacred, however, as these
reserved powers are regarded, the Court is particular to declare
with emphasis the supreme and paramount authority of the
Constitution and laws of the United States relating to the
regulation of commerce with foreign nations and among the several
states, and that whenever these reserved powers, or any of them,
are so exercised as to come in conflict with the free course of the
powers vested in Congress, the law of the state must yield to the
supremacy of the federal authority, though such law may have been
enacted in the exercise of a power undelegated and indisputably
reserved to the states.
In the light of these principles and those which this Court in
its numerous decisions has added in illustration and more explicit
development, it will not be difficult to determine whether the law
of Iowa under consideration invades, either in purpose or effect,
the domain of federal authority.
To support the affirmative, the plaintiff in error maintains
that alcohol is in itself a useful commodity, not necessarily
noxious, and is a subject of property; that the very statute under
consideration, by various provisions, and especially by those which
permit in express terms the manufacture of intoxicating liquors for
mechanical, medicinal, culinary, or sacramental purposes,
recognizes those qualities, and expressly authorizes the
manufacture; that the manufacture being thus legalized, alcohol not
being
per se a nuisance, but recognized as property and
the subject of lawful commerce, the state had no power to prohibit
the manufacture of it for foreign sales.
The main vice in this argument consists in the unqualified
assumption that the statute legalizes the manufacture. The
proposition that, supposing the goods were once lawfully called
into existence, it would then be beyond the power of the state
either to forbid or impede their exportation may be conceded. Here,
however, the very question underlying the case is whether the goods
ever came lawfully into existence. It is a grave error to say that
the statute "expressly authorized" the manufacture, for it did not;
to say that it had not prohibited the manufacture, for it had done
so; to say that the goods were
Page 128 U. S. 19
of Iowa's lawful manufactures, for that is substantially the
very point at issue. The exact statute is this: "No person shall
manufacture
or sell, . . . directly or indirectly, any
intoxicating liquors except as hereinafter provided." In a
subsequent section it is provided further that
"Nothing contained in this law shall prevent any persons from
manufacturing in this state liquors for the purpose of being sold
according to the provisions of this chapter, to be used for
mechanical, medicinal, culinary, or sacramental purposes."
Here then is first, a sweeping prohibition against not the
manufacture
and sale, not a dealing which is composed of
both steps, and consequently must include manufacture as well as
sale, or,
e converso, sale as well as manufacture, in
order to incur the denunciation of the statute, but against either
the sale or the manufacture. The conjunction is disjunctive. The
sale is forbidden, the manufacture is forbidden, and each is
forbidden independently of the order. Such being the case on the
subject of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of the
manufacture (which is the point before the Court), it is
useless to argue as to the conditions under which it is permissible
to hold intoxicating liquors in possession or to sell them.
Looking again to the statute, we find that the unqualified
prohibition of any and all manufacture made by § 1523 is, by the
joint operation of a proviso in § 1524 and of §§ 1526 and 1530,
modified by four exceptions,
viz., sale for mechanical
purposes to an extent limited by the wants of the particular
locality of the seller, sale for medicinal purposes to the same
extent, sale for culinary purposes to the same extent, and sale for
sacramental purposes to the same extent. The supreme court of the
state held (and we agree with it) that these exceptions do not
include sales outside of the state. The effect of the statute,
then, is simply and clearly to prohibit all manufacture of
intoxicating liquors except for one or more of the four purposes
specified. "For the purpose," says the statute. The excepted
purpose is all that saves it from being
ab initio and
through each and every step of its progress unlawful.
It is a mistake to say as to this case that, the act of
transporting
Page 128 U. S. 20
the alcohol from the state in the course of lawful commerce with
other states not being a crime, to perform that act was not a
criminal intent, no matter when formed, whether before or after the
alcohol was manufactured. It is not the criminality of the intent
to
export that is here the question, but it is the
innocence or criminality, under the statute, of the
manufacture, in the absence of all four of the specific
exceptions to the prohibition, the actual and controlling and
bona fide presence of at least one of which was
indispensable to the legality of the manufacture.
We think the construction contended for by plaintiff in error
would extend the words of the grant to Congress in the
Constitution, beyond their obvious import, and is inconsistent with
its objects and scope. The language of the grant is, "Congress
shall have power to regulate commerce with foreign nations and
among the several states," etc. These words are used without any
veiled or obscure signification.
"As men whose intentions require no concealment generally employ
the words which most directly and aptly express the ideas they
intend to convey, the enlightened patriots who framed our
Constitution, and the people who adopted it, must be understood to
have employed words in their natural sense, and to have intended
what they have said."
Gibbons v. Ogden, supra.
No distinction is more popular to the common mind or more
clearly expressed in economic and political literature than that
between manufactures and commerce. Manufacture is transformation --
the fashioning of raw materials into a change of form for use. The
functions of commerce are different. The buying and selling and the
transportation incidental thereto constitute commerce, and the
regulation of commerce in the constitutional sense embraces the
regulation at least of such transportation. The legal definition of
the term, as given by this Court in
County of Mobile v.
Kimball, 102 U. S. 691,
102 U. S. 702,
is as follows:
"Commerce with foreign nations and among the states, strictly
considered, consists in intercourse and traffic, including in these
terms navigation and the transportation and transit of persons and
property,
Page 128 U. S. 21
as well as the purchase, sale, and exchange of commodities."
If it be held that the term includes the regulation of all such
manufactures as are intended to be the subject of commercial
transactions in the future, it is impossible to deny that it would
also include all productive industries that contemplate the same
thing. The result would be that Congress would be invested, to the
exclusion of the states, with the power to regulate not only
manufacture, but also agriculture, horticulture, stock-raising,
domestic fisheries, mining -- in short, every branch of human
industry. For is there one of them that does not contemplate, more
or less clearly, an interstate or foreign market? Does not the
wheat grower of the northwest and the cotton planter of the south
plant, cultivate, and harvest his crop with an eye on the prices at
Liverpool, New York, and Chicago? The power being vested in
Congress and denied to the states, it would follow as an inevitable
result that the duty would devolve on Congress to regulate all of
these delicate, multiform, and vital interests -- interests which
in their nature are, and must be, local in all the details of their
successful management.
It is not necessary to enlarge on, but only to suggest, the
impracticability of such a scheme when we regard the multitudinous
affairs involved, and the almost infinite variety of their minute
details. It was said by Chief Justice Marshall that it is a matter
of public history that the object of vesting in Congress the power
to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several
states was to insure uniformity for regulation against conflicting
and discriminating state legislation.
See also County of Mobile
v. Kimball, supra, 102 U. S. 697.
This being true, how can it further that object so to interpret the
constitutional provision as to place upon Congress the obligation
to exercise the supervisory powers just indicated? The demands of
such a supervision would require not uniform legislation generally
applicable throughout the United States, but a swarm of statutes
only locally applicable and utterly inconsistent. Any movement
toward the establishment of rules of production in this vast
country, with its many different
Page 128 U. S. 22
climates and opportunities, could only be at the sacrifice of
the peculiar advantages of a large part of the localities in it, if
not of every one of them. On the other hand, any movement toward
the local, detailed, and incongruous legislation required by such
an interpretation would be about the widest possible departure from
the declared object of the clause in question. Nor this alone. Even
in the exercise of the power contended for, Congress would be
confined to the regulation not of certain branches of industry,
however numerous, but to those instances in each and every branch
where the producer contemplated an interstate market. These
instances would be almost infinite, as we have seen, but still
there would always remain the possibility, and often it would be
the case that the producer contemplated a domestic market. In that
case, the supervisory power must be executed by the state, and the
interminable trouble would be presented that whether the one power
or the other should exercise the authority in question would be
determined not by any general or intelligible rule, but by the
secret and changeable intention of the producer in each and every
act of production. A situation more paralyzing to the state
governments, and more provocative of conflicts between the general
government and the states, and less likely to have been what the
framers of the Constitution intended it would be difficult to
imagine.
We find no provisions in any of the sections of the statute
under consideration the object and purpose of which are to exert
the jurisdiction of the state over persons or property or
transactions within the limits of other states, or to act upon
intoxicating liquors as exports or while they are in process of
exportation or importation. Its avowed object is to prevent not the
carrying of intoxicating liquors out of the state, but to prevent
their manufacture, except for specified purposes, within the state.
It is true that notwithstanding its purposes and ends are
restricted to the jurisdictional limits of the State of Iowa, and
apply to transactions wholly internal and between its own citizens,
its effects may reach beyond the state by lessening the amount of
intoxicating liquors exported. But it does not follow that because
the products of a domestic
Page 128 U. S. 23
manufacture may ultimately become the subjects of interstate
commerce at the pleasure of the manufacturer, the legislation of
the state respecting such manufacture is an attempted exercise of
the power to regulate commerce exclusively conferred upon Congress.
Can it be said that a refusal of a state to allow articles to be
manufactured within her borders (for export) any more directly or
materially effects her external commerce than does her action in
forbidding the retail within her borders of the same articles after
they have left the hands of the importers? That the latter could be
done was decided years ago, and we think there is no practical
difference in principle between the two cases.
"As has been often said, legislation [by a state] may in a great
variety of ways affect commerce and persons engaged in it without
constituting a regulation of it within the meaning of the
Constitution,"
unless, under the guise of police regulations, it imposes a
direct burden upon interstate commerce or directly interferes with
its freedom.
Hall v. De Cuir, 95 U. S.
485,
95 U. S. 487,
Chief Justice Waite delivering the opinion of the Court in that
case, citing
Sherlock v. Alling, 93 U.
S. 103;
State Tax on Railway Gross
Receipts, 15 Wall. 284;
Munn v. Illinois,
94 U. S. 113;
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Co. v. Iowa,
94 U. S. 155;
Willson v. Blackbird Creek
Marsh Co., 2 Pet. 245;
Pound v. Turck,
95 U. S. 459;
Gilman v.
Philadelphia, 3 Wall. 713;
Gibbons v. Ogden,
supra, and
Cooley v. Board of
Wardens, 12 How. 299.
We have seen that whether a state, in the exercise of its
undisputed power of local administration, can enact a statute
prohibiting within its limits the manufacture of intoxicating
liquors except for certain purposes is not any longer an open
question before this Court. Is that right to be overthrown by the
fact that the manufacturer intends to export the liquors when made?
Does the statute, in omitting to except from its operation the
manufacture of intoxicating liquors within the limits of the state
for export, constitute an unauthorized interference with the power
given to Congress to regulate commerce?
These questions are well answered in the language of the
Page 128 U. S. 24
Court in the
License Tax
Cases, 5 Wall. 470:
"Over this commerce and trade [the internal commerce and
domestic trade of the states] Congress has no power of regulation,
nor any direct control. This power belongs exclusively to the
states. No interference by Congress with the business of citizens
transacted within a state is warranted by the Constitution except
such as is strictly incidental to the exercise of powers clearly
granted to the legislature. The power to authorize a business
within a state is plainly repugnant to the exclusive power of the
state over the same subject."
The manufacture of intoxicating liquors in a state is
nonetheless business within that state because the manufacturer
intends at his convenience, to export such liquors to foreign
countries or to other states.
This Court has already decided that the fact that an article was
manufactured for export to another state does not
of
itself make it an article of interstate commerce within the
meaning of Section 8, Article I, of the Constitution, and that the
intent of the manufacturer does not determine the time when the
article or product passes from the control of the state and belongs
to commerce.
We refer to the case of
Coe v. Errol, 116 U.
S. 517. In that case, certain logs cut at a place in New
Hampshire had been hauled to the Town of Errol, on the Androscoggin
River, in that state, for the purpose of transportation beyond the
limits of that state to Lewiston, Maine, and were held at Errol for
a convenient opportunity for such transportation. The selectmen of
the town assessed on the logs state, county, town, and school
taxes, and the question before the Court was whether these logs
were liable to be taxed like other property in the State of New
Hampshire. The Court held them to be so liable, and said, MR.
JUSTICE BRADLEY delivering the opinion:
"Do the owner's state of mind in relation to the goods, that is,
his intent to export them, and his partial preparation to do so,
exempt them from taxation? This is the precise question for
solution. . . . There must be a point of time when they cease to be
governed exclusively by the domestic law and begin to be governed
and protected by the national law of
Page 128 U. S. 25
commercial regulation, and that moment seems to us to be a
legitimate one for this purpose, in which they commence their final
movement for transportation from the state of their origin to that
of their destination. When the products of the farm or the forest
are collected and brought in from the surrounding country to a town
or station serving as an entrepot for that particular region,
whether on a river or a line of railroad, such products are not yet
exports, nor or they in process of exportation, nor is exportation
begun until they are committed to the common carrier for
transportation out of the state to the state of their destination,
or have started on their ultimate passage to that state. Until
then, it is reasonable to regard them as not only within the state
of their origin, but as a part of the general mass of property of
that state, subject to its jurisdiction and liable to taxation
there if not taxed by reason of their being intended for
exportation, but taxed without any discrimination, in the usual way
and manner in which such property is taxed in the state. . . . The
point of time when state jurisdiction over the commodities of
commerce begins and ends is not an easy matter to designate or
define, and yet it is highly important, both to the shipper and to
the state, that it should be clearly defined, so as to avoid all
ambiguity or question. . . . But no definite rule has been adopted
with regard to the point of time at which the taxing power of the
state ceases as to goods exported to a foreign country or to
another state. What we have already said, however, in relation to
the products of a state intended for exportation to another state
will indicate the view which seems to us the sound one on that
subject -- namely that such goods do not cease to be part of the
general mass of property in the state, subject as such to its
jurisdiction and to taxation in the usual way until they have been
shipped or entered with a common carrier for transportation to
another state or have been started upon such transportation in a
continuous route or journey. . . . It is true it was said in the
case of
The Daniel Ball, 10 Wall.
557,
77 U. S. 565: 'Whenever a
commodity has begun to move as an article of trade from one state
to another, commerce in that commodity between the states has
commenced.'
Page 128 U. S. 26
But this movement does not begin until the articles have been
shipped or started for transportation from the one state to the
other."
The application of the principles above announced to the case
under consideration leads to a conclusion against the contention of
the plaintiff in error. The police power of a state is as broad and
plenary as its taxing power, and property within the state is
subject to the operations of the former so long as it is within the
regulating restrictions of the later.
The judgment of the Supreme Court of Iowa is
Affirmed.
