Opinion of the Court.

aration for exportation of tobacco grown in the State, any opinion as to the provisions of those laws referring to the inspection of tobacco grown out of Maryland was expressly reserved.

In Voight v. Wright, 141 U. S. 62, 65, a statute of Virginia relating to the inspection of flour brought into that Commonwealth was held to be unconstitutional, because it required the inspection of flour from other States when no such inspection was required of flour manufactured in Virginia, an objection to which the act under consideration is not open, for the inspection and payment of its cost are required in respect of all fertilizers, whether manufactured in the State or out of it, and it is conceded that fertilizers are manufactured in North Carolina, as, indeed, their many laws incorporating companies for the purpose of so doing plainly indicate. Mr. Justice Bradley in that case remarked that the question was "still open as to the mode and extent in which state inspection laws can constitutionally be applied to personal property imported from abroad, or from another State, whether such laws can go beyond the identification and regulation of such things as are strictly injurious to the health and lives of the people, and therefore not entitled to the protection of the commercial power of the government, as explained and distinguished in the case of Crutcher v. Kentucky, ante, 47, just decided."

Whenever inspection laws act on the subject before it becomes an article of commerce they are confessedly valid, and also when, although operating on articles brought from one State into another, they provide for inspection in the exercise of that power of self-protection commonly called the police power.

No doubt can be entertained of this where the inspection is manifestly intended, and calculated in good faith, to protect the public health, the public morals, or the public safety. Minnesota v. Barber, 136 U. S. 313. And it has now been determined that this is so, if the object of the inspection is the prevention of imposition on the public generally.

In Plumley v. Massachusetts, 155 U. S. 461, it was decided that a statute of Massachusetts "to prevent deception in the

Opinion of the Court.

manufacture and sale of imitation butter," in its application to the sale of oleomargarine artificially colored so as to cause it to look like yellow butter, and brought into Massachusetts, was not in conflict with the clause of the Constitution of the United States investing Congress with power to regulate commerce among the several States. That decision explicitly rests on the ground that the statute sought to prevent a fraud upon the general public. It is true that an article of food was involved, but the sole ground of the decision was that the State had the power to protect its citizens from being cheated in making their purchases, and that thereby the commercial power was not interfered with. Schollenberger v. Pennsyl vania, 171 U. S. 1.

Where the subject is of wide importance to the community, the consequences of fraudulent practices generally injurious, and the suppression of such frauds matter of public concern, it is within the protective power of the State to intervene. Laws providing for the inspection and grading of flour, the inspection and regulation of weights and measures, the weighing of coal on public scales, and the like, are all competent exercises of that power, and it is not perceived why the prevention of deception in the adulteration of fertilizers does not fall within its scope.

It is apparent that there is no article entering into common use in many of the States, and particularly the Southern States, the inspection of which is so necessary for the protection of those citizens engaged in agricultural operations, as commercial fertilizers. Certain ingredients, as ammonia or nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash, make up the larger part of the value of these fertilizers, and without the aid of scientific analysis, the amount of these ingredients cannot be ascertained nor whether the fertilizer sold is of a uniform grade. The average farmer was compelled, without an analy sis, to depend on his sense of smell, or his success, or failure, during the previous year with the same brand or name, to determine the relative amounts of the essential ingredients, and the value of the materials. To protect agricultural interests against spurious and low grade fertilizers was the object

Opinion of the Court.

of this law, which simply imposed the actual cost of inspection, necessarily varying with the agricultural condition of the various years. The label or tag could only be furnished. after an analysis, the result of which was therein stated. In that light, the law practically required an analysis in every case, and was sustained as so doing by the Supreme Court of North Carolina in State v. Norris, 78 N. C. 443.

The act of 1877, requiring the obtaining of a license to sell fertilizers on the payment of a privilege tax of five hundred dollars, was considered in that case, at January term, 1878, of that court, and held valid under the state constitution as intended to protect the public from being imposed on by adulterated fertilizers, and to keep the traffic in the hands of responsible parties, making the means to that end self-sustaining by the license tax. And it was also decided that the law was not in conflict with the Federal Constitution on the authority of Woodruff v. Parham, 8 Wall. 123, and Hinson v. Lott, 8 Wall. 148.

As before remarked, the sections of the act of 1877 relating to this subject were carried forward into the code of 1883, and section 2190 required the license and imposed the privilege tax.

In Stokes v. Department of Agriculture, 106 N. C. 439 (1890), the Supreme Court held that section 2190, in prohibiting the sale, or the offering for sale, of fertilizers in North Carolina until the manufacturer or person importing the same should obtain a license, did not prohibit the use of them in the State, nor the purchase of them in another State, to be used for fertilizing purposes by the purchaser himself in North Carolina; and that, where a person acting for himself and others, resident farmers of the State, ordered from a non-resident manufacturer a number of bags of fertilizer, a given number being ordered for each purchaser, and the same was shipped in separate parcels, addressed to different purchasers separately, and separate bills sent to each purchaser, there being no intent to evade the statute, the transaction did not come within the inhibition of section 2190, and the goods were not liable to seizure at the instance of the department of agriculture.

Opinion of the Court.

Similar laws of other States, regulating the sale of fertilizers, have been sustained on the same ground.

In Steiner v. Ray, 84 Alabama, 93, it was held that a statute regulating the sale of commercial fertilizers, when its controlling purpose was to guard the agricultural public against spurious and worthless compounds sometimes sold as fertilizers, and to furnish to buyers cheap and reliable means of proving the deception and fraud, should such be attempted, was strictly within the pale of police regulation and was constitutional. And this case was cited with approval in Kirby v. Huntsville Fertilizer &c. Co., 105 Alabama, 529, where it was ruled that the sale of commercial fertilizers was void unless each sack, parcel or package was tagged as required by statute at the time the right of property passed from the vendor to the vendee.

In Vanmeter v. Spurrier, 94 Kentucky, 22, an act of Kentucky, "to regulate the sale of fertilizers in this Commonwealth, and to protect agriculturists in the purchase and use of the same," was sustained; and it was held that the statute could not be fairly construed to authorize the levy of an impost on interstate commerce beyond what was necessary to inspection. The court said: "The statute, as its title indicates, was enacted for protection of farmers of this Commonwealth against fraud and imposition of those having for sale commercial fertilizers. To accomplish that object, each one selling, or offering for sale, any fertilizer is required to submit a sample for analysis and test of its quality at the Experimental Station. For that purpose only can the fees collected by the director be used, and in that way and to that extent only can farmers of the Commonwealth be benefited by the statute. In our opinion the law is valid in every respect."

In Faircloth v. De Leon, 81 Georgia, 158; Goulding Fertilizer Company v. Driver, 25 S. E. Rep. 922, and other cases, the Supreme Court of Georgia has held that the seller of commercial fertilizers, which had not been inspected as the law required, could not maintain against the buyer an action for the price; but in Martin v. Upshur Guano Company, 77

Syllabus.

Georgia, 257, that the statute was not applicable where sale and delivery were without the State.

The act of January 21, 1891, must be regarded, then, as an act providing for the inspection of fertilizers and fertilizing materials in order to prevent the practice of imposition on the people of the State, and the charge of twenty-five cents per ton as intended merely to defray the cost of such inspection. It being competent for the State to pass laws of this character, does the requirement of inspection and payment of its cost bring the act into collision with the commercial power vested. in Congress? Clearly this cannot be so as to foreign commerce, for clause two of section ten of article one expressly recognizes the validity of state inspection laws, and allows the collection of the amounts necessary for their execution; and we think the same principle must apply to interstate

commerce.

In any view, the effect on that commerce is indirect and incidental, and "the Constitution of the United States does not secure to any one the privilege of defrauding the public." Decree affirmed.

MR. JUSTICE HARLAN and MR. JUSTICE WHITE dissented.

SMYTH v. AMES.

SMYTHI v. SMITH.

SMYTH v. HIGGINSON.

APPEALS FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE DISTRICT OF NEBRASKA.

APPLICATION FOR REHEARING AND MODIFICATION OF JUDGMENTS.

Nos. 49, 50, 51. Submitted May 9, 1898. Decided May 31, 1898.

The decrees in the several cases are modified by striking from them the words referred to in the application of the appellants, and set forth in the opinion of the court.