Opinion,
The defendants were employed at a salary, by a manufacturing company in Rhode Island, to sell an article of merchandise called “soapine.” They came into the county of Schuylkill in the regular course of their employment, and, as they say in the History of the Case in their paper-book, “ were in the county temporarily, for the purpose of selling this article, as the agents of the manufacturers.” When they had completed their canvass of the county of Schuylkill, they would, if continuing in the employment of the manufacturers, move on to another county, and subject its citizens to the same system of house to house visitation and personal solicitation.
By § 1, act of April 17, 1846, P. L. 364, the sale of foreign or domestic goods, wares, and merchandise in the county of Schuylkill, by any person or persons, as a hawker or peddler, is forbidden. The defendants were arrested under this act while engaged in selling “ soapine” from house to house in Mahanoy City, and indicted. On the trial, the jury rendered a special verdict finding the defendants guilty of selling soapine from door to door, as the agents of the manufacturers, at a salary, with no personal interest in the goods or their proceeds, and submitted these facts to the judgment of the court. The
The next point taken by the defendants is that, under the-constitution of the state, an owner of goods has an indefeasible-right to carry them when and where he pleases in search of buyers. This conclusion seems to be drawn from a paragraph
I do not regard the sale of the natural products of the soil by the farmer or gardener by whom they are raised, as affected by the laws relating to peddlers. Farmers are- not within the mischief which these laws were intended to remedy, except as they are the victims of that mischief. They are not traders or travelers, in any legal sense. The carriage of the surplus products of the farm or garden to a market town, or from house to house, is not peddling, but is incidental to their business as farmers. Peddlers are forbidden to sell “goods, wares, and merchandise.” These words were never intended to include farm products in the hands of the farmer; nor is the transportation of such products to a market for sale, or to regular customers who are supplied by the grower, the sort of business at which the laws relating to peddling are directed. The business they were intended to reach is very plainly indicated in § 1, act of March 80, 1784, 2 Sm. L. 99, which declares: “ Whereas, many idle and vagrant persons may come into this state, and, under pretence of being hawsers and peddlers, may
On these facts, so found, the third and last question presented in this case is raised, viz., is not the sale of “soapine ” from door to door in Mahanoy City inter-state commerce? This is broadly asserted, and the position is taken that our laws on the subject of peddling are an invasion of the exclusive right of congress, under the federal constitution, to regulate inter-state commerce, and therefore void. We have understood inter-state commerce to refer to the free interchange of commodities between citizens of the different states, without regard to state lines. If we are right about this, then the laws relating to peddling do not interfere with such interchange, and cannot be an invasion of the authority of the United States. They erect no barrier at the state line, provide for no inspection or stoppage, and levy no tax on the introduction into or transportation through the state of any sort of property whatever. The citizen of another state may come into Pennsylvania when he will and where he will, stay as long as he chooses, open as many places for the sale of his goods as he may see fit, and enjoy the same measure of freedom in regard to the con
The judgment is affirmed.