This is аn appeal from the order of the District Court allowing the claims of the appellees against the bankrupt estate as prior lien claims upon the property and effects of the bankrupt, by virtue of section 2487 of the Kentucky Statutes. The statute is printed in the margin of this opinion.
The grounds of attack upon the order are (1) that the statute invoked is unconstitutional and in conflict with the Bankruptcy Act; (2) that the statute does not relate to manufacturing establishments other than those similar to rolling mills and foundries; and (3) that the bankrupt did not own or operate a manufaсturing establishment.
j'1-3] 1. The asserted ground of unconstitutionality is that the statute unreasonably discriminates in favor of those who furnish materials and supplies to manufacturing establishments, as against those furnishing money or machinery to the same establishments, as well as those furnishing materials and supplies to establishments not engaged in manufacturing, and discriminates against manufacturing establishments in favor of other establishments. We think this contention without merit.
The rule is well settled that the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment does not take from the states the power to classify thе subjects of legislation, but leaves to the Fegislatures a wide field of discretion in that regard, avoiding such classification only when unreasonable and arbitrary, and that a legislative classification is presumed to be reasonable unless it is apparent that there was and could be. no reasonable basis therefor. Lindsley v. Natural Carbonic Cas Co.,
“The debts to have priority, except as herein provided, and to be paid in full out of bankrupt estates, and the order of payment shall be: * * * (5) debts owing to any person who by the laws of the states or the United States is entitled to priority.”
It was expressly held by this court in the Bennett Case that this section of the Bankruptcy Act adopts the Kentucky statute in question, and makes it the applicable federal law in determining priorities.
[5J 3. The remaining question, viz., whether the bankrupt’s business was that of manufacturing, presents greater difficulties. The subject was elaborately discussed below by Judge Cochran, in an opinion reported as In re Rheinstrom & Sons Co.,
According to the record here, the real Maraschino cherry is grown in Dalmatia, Austria.
The specific questiоn is whether the putting up and marketing of these cherries, including their preservation, coloring, and flavoring, so as to produce the articles of commerce known as Maraschino cherries, specially adapted to the use stated, is, properly speaking, manufacture within the Kentucky statute. At the threshold we are met with the proposition that manufacturing necessarily implies transformation, the emerging of a new and different article, bearing a distinct name, character, or use. This general proposition has in numerous cases been declarеd and applied to the facts and under the conditions involved therein. Appellants insist that it follows from these decisions that the lien here in question must be denied, for the cherries went into the bankrupt’s establishment as cherries and came out as cherries, the separate identity of each cherry being retained. We refer to the more important of these decisions.
In Frazee v. Moffitt (C. C.)
“The substance of dried grass or hay is still grass. Change of name and manipulation do not necessarily constitute manufacture, within the meaning of section 2516.”
In Hartranft v. Wiegmann,
*835 “Tliay wore still shells. They had not been manufactured into a new and different article, having a distinctive name, character, or use from that of a shell.”
In Anheuser-Busch Brewing Ass’n v. United States,
There is also a group of cases involving statutory exemptions from taxation or license charges, some of which are relied upon by appellants. In City of New Orleans v. Mannessier, 32 Ea. Ann. 1075, it was held that an ice cream confectioner is not a manufacturer in the sense of the law which exempts the latter from taxation. The case involved liability for a license on the business of peddling ice cream on the streets. The exemption was claimed by virtue of a statute prohibiting municipal corporations from levying taxes on “persons engaged in selling articles of their own manufacture, manufactured in this state.” The court said:
“The attempt to magnify a confectionery, which is defendant’s business, into a manufacture, must fail.”
In City v. Coffee Co.,
In People v. Knickerbocker Ice Co.,
In People v. Roberts,
In Standard Tailoring Co. v. City of Louisville,
In City of Memphis v. St. L. & S. F. R. Co.,
Whatever conclusion the cases cited may lead to in the disposition of thе instant case, each of them is distinguishable from the case before us. Of the tariff cases generally it may be said that the question of classification is usually more or less technical, frequently depending upon comparison of different schedules. The hay case (Frazee v. Moffitt) and the shell case (Hartranft v. Weigmann) must be read in the light of the well-settled rule that doubts are resolved in favor of the importer, because “duties are never imposed on the citizens upon vague or doubtful interpretations.” Hartranft v. Weigmann, supra,
Frazee v. Moffitt (the hay case) was сited with approval by the Supreme Court in Hartranft v. Weigmann and Brewing Ass’n v. United States, and by this court in Memphis v. Railroad Co., supra, and has been similarly cited by other courts. But, as respects the case itself, it may be open to doubt whether its doctrine would be applied to one whose sole business affirmatively appeared to be the cutting, curing, and baling of hay for the market, as distinguished from hay which may have been and usually is made as incident to the general business-of farming. As to the corks, in Brewing Ass’n v. United States, they were merely cleansed and coated as an incident to preparing beer for export. Such treatment, while improving the corks, gave them no “distinctive name, character, or use.”
The cases involving exemption from taxation are, as a class, subject to the rule thus tersely stated in Jones Bros. v. City of Louisville,
“The right of taxation, is never presumed to be relinquished, and before any party can rightly claim an exemption from the common burden it is incumbent upon the party to show affirmatively that the exemption claimed is authorized by law. If there be a doubt upon the subject, that doubt must be resolved in favor of the state, and it is only where the exemption is shown to be granted in terms clear and unequivocal that the right of exemption can be maintained.”
On the other hand, statutes of the nature of the Kentucky lien law befоre us belong to the general class of remedial statutes; and while the courts were at one time inclined to hold that such statutes,, being in derogation of the common law, must always be strictly construed, there has been a noticeable relaxation in favor of a more liberal construction, for the purpose of effecting the beneficent purposes of such legislation. The federal Safety Appliance Act is, in this view liberally construed. Johnson v. So. Pac. R. R. Co.,
16 j It is “a sound rule of construction that a statute giving a lien Is regarded as a remedial statute, and is to be liberally construed, so as to give full effect to the remedy, in view of the beneficial purpose contemplated by it.” 1 Jones on Liens, § 1005. See, also, Smalley v.
Apart, however, from any question of liberal construction of lien statutes generally, we think it entirely safe to say that the tendency of modern decision has been to appreciably expand the formerly prevailing definition1 of “manufacture.” In Tidewater Oil Co. v. United States, 171 U, S. 210, 216, 18 Sup. Ct. 837,
“Undoubtedly Congress intended that tliat class of business corporations engaged in any class of manufacturing, as its principal business, and not as a mere minor incident to some larger tcorlc,4 should be subject to the law; and this intention should be regarded by giving to doubtful words and terms a liberal rather than a narrow meaning. ‘Manufacturing1 has no technical meaning. It is not limited by the means used in making, nor by the kind of product produced. In Kidd v. Pearson, 12S U. S. 1, 20 [9 Sup. Ct. 6, 10 (32 L. Ed. 346 )], Mr. Justice Field said that ‘manufacture is transformation, the finishing of raw material into a change оf form or use.’ ”
And in the Friday Case this expanded definition of manufacture was. held to cover a corporation organized to construct railroads, buildings, and other structures, including arches, walls, and bridges from concrete, although the materials used in making were combined, and the labor, machinery, and materials supplied at the place of construction called for by the contract. And this court, in Columbia Iron Works v. National Lead Co.,
We find nothing in the Kentucky decisions supporting the limited construction of “manufacturing” contended for by appellants. It is true that in Bogard v. Tyler,
In common parlance, the bankrupt’s establishment would ordinarily be called a factory. Canning factories and pickle factories arc well known in common speech. Considering the purpose of the statute, we think it more natural to conclude that the Legislature used the term “manufacturing establishment” in its ordinary sense, rather than in its technical meaning, as used in relations to which the object of the statute is entirely foreign, viz., tariff cases and tax exemptions.
The actual business of the bankrupt here was more than mere canning or preserving, and more than mere cooking or coloring; whether the bankrupt was manufacturing “must turn more upon what it was actually doing than upon what it was authorized to do.” Friday v. Hall, supra, 216 U. S. page 454, 30 Sup. Ct. 261,
It results from these views that the order complained of should be affirmed, with costs.
Notes
Sec. 2487. Lien of Employes and Materialmen on Property Assigned for Benefit of Creditors.—When the property or effects of any [mine] railroad, turnpike, сanal or other public improvement company, or of any owner or operator of any rolling mill, foundry or other manufacturing establishment, whether incorporated or not, shall be assigned for the benefit of creditors, shall come into the hands of any executor, administrator, commissioner, receiver of a court, trustee or assignee for the benefit of creditors, or shall in any wise come to he distributed among creditors, whether by operation of law or by the act of such company, owner or operator, the employes of such cоmpany, owner or operator in such business, and the persons who shall have furnished materials or supplies for the carrying on of such business, shall have a Hen upon so much of such property and effects as may have been involved in such business, and all the accessories connected therewith, including the interest of such company, owner or operator in the real estate used in carrying on such business. [The amendment of March 23, 1894, inserted “mine” in first line.]
Tullis v. Lake Erie & Western R. R. Co.,
According to the Century Dictionary, “Marasca” is the name of the cherry, “Maraschino” that of the cordial distilled therefrom or flavored therewith. The difference, however, is immaterial to the reasoning or the conclusion of this opinion.
Italics ours.
