Crenshaw v. Arkansas

Citations

• 227 U.S. 389
• 33 S. Ct. 294
• 57 L. Ed. 565
• 1913 U.S. LEXIS 2311

Syllabus

<p>The negotiation of sales of goods which are in another State, for' the purpose of introducing them in the State in which the negotiation is made, is interstate commerce. Bobbins v; Shelby County Taxing District, 120 U. S. 489.</p> <p>The police power of a State cannot obstruct foreign or interstate commerce beyond the necessity for its-exercise; nor can objects not within its scope be secured under color of the police power at the expense of the protection afforded by the Federal Constitution. Railroad Co. v. Husen, 95 U. S. 465.</p> <p>While a tax on peddlers who.sell and forthwith deliver goods is within the police power of the State, a tax on one who travels and solicits orders for goods to be shipped from without the State is a burden on interstate commerce and unconstitutional. Emert.v, Missouri, 156 U. S.'296, distinguished.</p> <p>Peddlers, at common law, ,and under those statutes regulating them which have been sustained, are such as travel from place to place selling goods carried with them, and not such as take orders for delivery of goods to be shipped in the course of commerce.</p> <p>This court in dealing with rights created and conserved by the Federal Constitution looks to the substance of things and not the names by which they are labeled.</p> <p>A State cannot, by defining a business subject to its own police power as including a class which is not subject to that power, deprive such class of rights protected by the Federal Constitution.</p> <p>A state statute, imposing a license on those who solicit orders, from samples which they do not sell, of articles to be shipped from another State and which are afterwards delivered to the purchaser by the manufacturer, is an unconstitutional burden on interstate commerce beyond the police power of the State, and cannot be justified as a license tax on peddlers even though the state statute defines the persons soliciting the orders as peddlers; and so held as to the law of Arkansas of April 1, 1909, regula