Story Case

The Wear Well Aluminum Company engaged young men who attended college during the winter, to sell kitchen ware to housewives during the summer vacation months. James Bowman of Princeton University, was among the salesmen who entered the New England states. While Bowman was working in a small town in Maine, the local police officers attempted to stop him, until he had paid a license fee which under a town ordinance all itinerant salesmen were compelled to pay. Bowman wrote to his employers, the Wear Well Aluminum Company, for advice in the matter. How should the company instruct him?

Ruling Court Case. State Of Iowa Vs. Whitlock, Volume 96 Iowa Reports, Page 581

The General Assembly of the State of Iowa enacted a law which provided: "Any itinerant vendor of any drug, nostrum, ointment, or appliance of any kind intended for the treatment of diseases or injury, etc., shall pay a license of one hundred dollars per annum. Any person violating this section, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall, upon conviction, pay a fine of not less than one hundred dollars, and not more than two hundred dollars."

Whitlock was engaged in the business of selling proprietory medicines which were manufactured in the state of Minnesota, and were owned by him until he sold them. He travelled over the state of Iowa and offered the medicines for sale, without having procured a license, in accordance with the law referred to above. He was indicted, convicted, and fined for violating the law in question. He contended that the acts under which he was convicted are repugnant to that part of section 8, of Article 1 of the Constitution of the United States, which gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce, in which he claims he was engaged when arrested.

Mr. Justice Robinson said: "It is true that the power vested in Congress to regulate commerce among the several states is a power complete in itself to prescribe the rules by which that commerce is to be governed ; that it is co-extensive with the subject on which it acts, and cannot be stopped at the external boundary of a state, but enters it, and is capable of authorizing a disposition of articles of commerce so that they become a part of the common mass of the property within that state. But, it has been held that state laws which do not discriminate between residents and products of a state and those of another state, which are not designed to interfere in any manner with interstate commerce, as those which are in the nature of a simple tax upon sales of merchandise, imposed alike upon all persons, whether residents or non-residents of the state, are not repugnant to the Constitutional provision in question.

"The primary object of the acts is not to derive a revenue for the use of the state, but in large part, at least, to protect its citizens against solicitation and harmful practices of irresponsible and unknown travelling vendors of drugs and other articles intended for the treatment of diseases or injury, who, in carrying on their business, publicly confess to cure or treat diseases, injuries or deformities, and thus promote the sale of their wares to the credulous." The conviction was affirmed.

Ruling Law. Story Case Answer

Itinerant salesmen or peddlers who carry with them the identical goods sold, are subject to local ordinances and state statutes, regulating the sale of such goods. This is true because the sales made by them are not a part of interstate commerce, although the goods they sell are brought into the state by them.

If in the Story Case, Bowman merely carried samples, as was probably the case, and took orders which were later shipped by the company, he was engaged in interstate commerce, and not amenable to the local ordinances. This is true, although he distributed the goods to his customers.