made to a trustee. The rights so vested in the creditors being enforcible at any time within four years under the Ohio law.

The Federal Constitution, Article I, § 8, gives Congress the power to establish uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcy throughout the United States. In view of this grant of authority to the Congress it has been settled from an early date that state laws to the extent that they conflict with the laws of Congress, enacted under its constitutional authority, on the subject of bankruptcies are suspended. While this is true, state laws are thus suspended only to the extent of actual conflict with the system provided by the Bankruptcy Act of Congress. Sturges v. Crowninshield, 4 Wheat. 122; Ogden v. Saunders, 12 Wheat. 213.

Notwithstanding this requirement as to uniformity the bankruptcy acts of Congress may recognize the laws of the State in certain particulars, although such recognition may lead to different results in different States. For example, the Bankruptcy Act recognizes and enforces the laws of the States affecting dower, exemptions, the validity of mortgages, priorities of payment and the like. Such recognition in the application of state laws does not affect the constitutionality of the Bankruptcy Act, although in these particulars the operation of the act is not alike in all the States. Hanover National Bank v. Moyses, 186 U. S. 181, 188, 189, 190. True it is that general assignments for the benefit of creditors are acts of bankruptcy, Act of 1898, § 3, clause 4, and since the amendment of 1903, 32 Stat. 797, a receivership of an insolvent debtor with a view to distribution of his property for the benefit of creditors will have the like effect. 1 Loveland on Bankruptcy, 4th ed., § 153. In such cases the bankruptcy proceedings, taken within four months, displace those in the state court and terminate the jurisdiction of the latter. Randolph v. Scruggs, 190 U. S. 533, 537; In re Watts & Sachs, 190 U. S.

1, 31. But it does not follow that state statutes intended to avoid conveyances actually or constructively fraudulent and thereby to promote the equal distribution of insolvent estates, may not be availed of by the trustee. Section 70e of the Bankruptcy Act provides:

"The trustee may avoid any transfer by the bankrupt of his property which any creditor of such bankrupt might have avoided, and may recover the property so transferred, or its value, from the person to whom it was transferred, unless he was a bona fide holder for value prior to the date of the adjudication. Such property may be recovered or its value collected from whoever may have received it, except a bona fide holder for value. For the purpose of such recovery any court of bankruptcy as hereinbefore defined, and any State court which would have had jurisdiction if bankruptcy had not intervened, shall have concurrent jurisdiction."

This section as construed by this court gives the trustee in bankruptcy a right of action to recover property transferred in violation of state law. Security Warehousing Co. v. Hand, 206 U. S. 415, 425, 426; Knapp v. Milwaukee Trust Co., 216 U. S. 545, 557.

And a right of action under this subdivision is not subject to the four months' limitation of other sections (60b, 67e) of the Bankruptcy Act. Under this subdivision if a creditor could have avoided a transfer under a state law, a trustee may do the same. In re Mullen, 101 Fed. Rep. 413 (opinion by Judge Lowell); 1 Loveland on Bankruptcy, 4th ed. 786, 787; Collier on Bankruptcy, 11th ed., p. 1178, and cases cited in note 439.

Turning now to the sections of the Ohio laws in question, the right to proceed by course of law to recover particular property transferred as prohibited in § 6344, and to cause the same to be administered for the equal benefit of creditors, as in cases of assignment to trustees for the benefit of creditors, has long been part of the stat

utory law of Ohio. The part in § 6343 which enables the court to appoint a receiver to take charge of all the assets of the debtor or debtors, including the property conveyed, and administer the same for the equal benefit of creditors, is the new feature of the law.

It is apparent that this section intends to permit the appointment of a receiver to take charge of all the assets of the debtor when the provisions of the statute apply as to the debtor and his transferee, and the latter is required. to know of the fraudulent intent on the part of the debtor.

Creditors are not thereby deprived of rights, but in case of bankruptcy proceedings within four months of a general assignment for creditors as was the case here, the property may be brought into the bankruptcy court, or, as in this case, may be in its possession and be retained in that court to be administered for the benefit of general creditors. This state statute is not opposed to the policy of the bankruptcy law or in contravention of the rules and principles established by it with a view to the fair distribution of the assets of the insolvent. It is only state laws which conflict with the bankruptcy laws of Congress that are suspended; those which are in aid of the Bankruptcy Act can stand. Miller v. New Orleans Fertilizer Co., 211 U. S. 496.

This view of the sections in question was taken by the Circuit Court of Appeals, 6th Circuit, in In re Farrell, 176 Fed. Rep. 505, 509, 510, wherein in the opinion it was said that the changes made by the new statutes were in harmony with the policy of the Bankruptcy Act and in aid of its purposes.

There is much discussion in the books as to what constitutes a bankruptcy act as distinguished from an insolvency law. It is settled that a State may not pass an insolvency law which provides for a discharge of the debtor from his obligations, which shall have the effect of a bankruptcy discharge as to creditors in other States, and this although no general federal bankruptcy act is in effect.

And while it is not necessary to decide that there may not be state insolvent laws which are suspended although not providing for a discharge of indebtedness, all the cases lay stress upon the fact that one of the principal requisites of a true bankruptcy law is for the benefit of the debtor in that it discharges his future acquired property from the obligation of existing debts.

In the case of Mayer v. Hellman, 91 U. S. 496, this court had before it, while the Bankruptcy Act of 1867 was in force, the question of the validity of the assignment of an insolvent, in Ohio, to trustees for the benefit of all his creditors executed six months before the proceedings in bankruptcy had been taken, and it was held that the assignment was good and the assignees in bankruptcy not entitled to the possession of the property. Mr. Justice Field, in delivering the opinion of the court, said:

"In the argument of the counsel of the defendant in error, the position is taken that the Bankrupt Act suspends the operation of the act of Ohio regulating the mode of administering assignments for the benefit of creditors, treating the latter as an insolvent law of the State. The answer is, that the statute of Ohio is not an insolvent law in any proper sense of the term. It does not compel, or in terms even authorize, assignments: it assumes that such instruments were conveyances previously known, and only prescribes a mode by which the trust created shall be enforced. It provides for the security of the creditors by exacting a bond from the trustees for the discharge of their duties; it requires them to file statements showing what they have done with the property; and affords in various ways the means of compelling them to carry out the purposes of the conveyance. There is nothing in the act resembling an insolvent law. It does not discharge the insolvent from arrest or imprisonment: it leaves his after-acquired property liable to his creditors precisely as though no assignment had been made. The provisions

for enforcing a trust are substantially such as a court of chancery would apply in the absence of any statutory provision. The assignment in this case must, therefore, be regarded as though the statute of Ohio, to which reference is made, had no existence. There is an insolvent law in that State; but the assignment in question was not made in pursuance of any of its provisions. The position, therefore, of counsel, that the Bankrupt Law of Congress suspends all proceedings under the Insolvent Law of the State, has no application."

The federal system of bankruptcy is designed not only to distribute the property of the debtor, not by law exempted, fairly and equally among his creditors, but as a main purpose of the act, intends to aid the unfortunate debtor by giving him a fresh start in life, free from debts, except of a certain character, after the property which he owned at the time of bankruptcy has been administered for the benefit of creditors. Our decisions lay great stress upon this feature of the law-as one not only of private but of great public interest in that it secures to the unfortunate debtor, who surrenders his property for distribution, a new opportunity in life. Neal v. Clark, 95 U. S. 704, 709; Traer v. Clews, 115 U. S. 528, 541; Hanover National Bank v. Moyses, 186 U. S. 181, 192; Wetmore v. Markoe, 196 U. S. 68, 77; Burlingham v. Crouse, 228 U. S. 459, 473.

This feature of a bankruptcy law is wholly wanting in the Ohio statutes under consideration. Indeed, there is not now, any more than when Mayer v. Hellman, supra, was decided, any attempt in the Ohio laws to provide for the discharge of the debtor from his existing debts.

If the Ohio statutes in the feature now under consideration be suspended, it would follow that a person in Ohio might successfully claim a part of the estate which is being administered in bankruptcy, although the conveyance under which the property is claimed is voidable under the laws of the State where it was made and the alleged right