100 P. 296 | Or. | 1909
delivered the opinion of the court.
The defendants were arrested for a violation of chapter 206, p. 339, Laws 1905, which provides that any peddler, hawker, or itinerant vendor, who shall peddle, hawk or vend “any stoves, ranges, wagons, carriages, buggies, carts, surreys, or other kinds of four-wheeled or two-wheeled vehicles, or fanning mills or similar goods, wares, or merchandise, within such county,” without first having obtained a license therefor, as provided in section 1 of such act, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof shall be fined not less than $300 or more than $500 or imprisoned in the county jail not less than one month or more than one year. The case was submitted to the court below upon an agreed statement of facts, from which it appears that the Spaulding Manufacturing Company is a co-partnership engaged in the manufacture, for sale, of buggies and wagons, at Grinnell, Iowa, and all members of such firm reside in that State. The defendant Wright is a citizen of New York, and Ogan of Pennsylvania, and both were employed, on a salary, by the Spaulding Company to sell in this State buggies manufactured by them. Wright was a traveling solicitor or salesman, and Ogan was the
A statute, which directly or by implication grants special privileges, or imposes special burdens upon persons engaged in substantially the same business, under the same conditions, cannot be sound, because it is class legislation, and an infringement of the equal rights guaranteed to all. In re Yot Sang (D. C.) 75 Fed. 983; Connolly v. Union Sewer Pipe Co., 184 U. S. 540 (22 Sup. Ct. 431: 46 L. Ed. 679); State v. Conlon, 65 Conn. 478 (33 Atl. 519: 31 L. R. A. 55: 48 Am. St. Rep. 227). The statute under consideration is plainly in violation of this principle. There is no pretense that it applies to the occupation of peddlers or itinerant vendors as a whole or generally. It requires persons engaged in peddling a few enumerated articles to obtain a license and pay an exorbitant, if not prohibitive, fee therefor, while peddlers of all other articles may exercise their calling without any restriction* or restraint. It makes an arbitrary classification,' based upon the articles sold, regardless of whether they are injurious or detrimental in any way. A peddler who sells stoves, buggies, or fanning mills, all of them legitimate and necessary articles, comes within the statute, but one who sells clocks, patent medicines, pianos, fruit trees, sewing machines, jewelry, dynamite, or any one of a thousand other articles, whether harmful or not, may do so without penalty and punishment, and without being required to pay a fee therefor. The busi
Judgment reversed. Reversed.