Opinion of the Court.

fully forbade such manufacture or sale, or to disregard any regulations which a State might lawfully prescribe in reference to that article. It was also held that the act of Congress was not intended as a regulation of commerce among the States.

By the reference which we have already made to this statute we have not intended to claim that it was a regulation of commerce among the States further than the provisions of the act distinctly applied to its manufacture and sale. We refer to it for the purpose of showing that the article itself was therein recognized as a proper and lawful subject of commerce with foreign nations and among the several States under such lawful regulations as the State might choose to impose. We think that what Congress thus taxes and recognizes as a proper subject of commerce cannot be totally excluded from any particular State simply because the State may choose to decide that for the purpose of preventing the importation of an impure or adulterated article it will not permit the introduction of the pure and unadulterated article within its borders upon any terms whatever.

We are therefore of opinion that the first ground for upholding the conviction in these cases cannot be sustained.

Nor do we think the conviction can be sustained upon the ground taken in the opinion of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

The question in regard to packing the oleomargarine first arose in the case of Commonwealth v. Schollenberger, 156 Penn. St. 201. The defendant in that case was an agent of a non-resident manufacturer of oleomargarine, and he sold at his store in Pennsylvania a package of the article weighing eighty pounds, made and stamped and branded in Rhode Island for use as an article of food. It was held that the case did not show that the sales were made in the original package of commerce. And it was said that a jury would be justified in finding that the mode of putting up the package was not adapted to meet the requirements of actual interstate commerce, but the requirements of an unlawful interstate retail trade. But the special verdict in this case shows what the

Opinion of the Court.

court said was lacking in the case just cited, for it appears in the verdict that the package in which the oleomargarine was sold was an original package, as required by the act of Congress, and was of such "form, size and weight as is used by producers or shippers for the purpose of securing both convenience in handling and security in transportation of merchandise between dealers in the ordinary course of actual commerce, and the said form, size and weight were adopted in good faith, and not for the purpose of evading the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, said package being one of a number of similar packages forming one consignment shipped by the said company to the said defendant." It also appears from the special verdict that the defendant was engaged in business in the city of Philadelphia as a wholesale dealer in oleomargarine as agent for the manufacturer; that he had paid the special tax upon the business as a wholesale dealer, and had otherwise complied with all the requirements of the act of Congress, and the article was openly sold as oleomargarine, and that fact was made known to the purchaser, and he understood that he was buying oleomargarine, and as soon as the tub was purchased it was removed unbroken from the place of sale by the purchaser thereof.

Upon the facts found in the special verdict, it is said in the opinion of the court below, 170 Penn. St. 291, that "it is very clear that this sale was a violation of our statute. The conviction was eminently proper, therefore, and should be sustained, unless the sale can be justified as one made of an\ original package within the proper meaning of that phrase. The non-residence of the manufacturer does not play any im portant part in this case, for he comes into this State to establish a store for the sale of his goods, pays the license exacted by the revenue laws, and puts his agent in charge of the sale of his goods from his store, not to the trade, but to customers. We have, therefore, a Pennsylvania store selling its stock of goods to its customers for their consumption from its own shelves; and unless these goods are in such original packages as the laws of the United States must protect, the sale is clearly punishable under our statute.

The

Opinion of the Court.

question is whether a package intended and used for the supply of the retail trade is an 'original package' within the protection of the interstate commerce cases.”

What are the rights of one engaged in interstate commerce in regard to the introduction of a lawful article of commerce \ into a State? Those rights have been declared by various decisions of this court, some of them made at a very early date, and coming down to the present time.

In the leading case of Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 193, it was said by Marshall, Chief Justice, that the commerce clause extends to every species of commercial intercourse among the several States, and that it does not stop at the external boundary of a State, and that this power to regulate included the power to prescribe the rule by which commerce is to be governed, and it was held that navigation was included within that power.

In Brown v. Maryland, 12 Wheat. 419, it was stated that this power to regulate commerce could not be stopped at the external boundary of a State, but must enter its interior, and that if the power reached the interior of the State and might be there exercised, it must be capable of authorizing the sale of those articles which it introduces. It was said that "sale is the object of importation and is an essential ingredient of that intercourse of which importation constitutes a part. It is as essential an ingredient, as indispensable to the existence of the entire thing, then, as importation itself. It must be considered as a component part of the power to regulate commerce."

Years after the decision of the last case and after many other decisions had been made upon the general subject of the commerce clause, this court in Bowman v. Chicago & Northwestern Railway, 125 U. S. 465, held that the State could not, for the purpose of protecting its people against the evils of intemperance, pass an act which regulated commerce by forbidding any common carrier to bring intoxicating liquors into the State from another State or Territory, excepting upon conditions mentioned in the act. Such act was held to be repugnant to the Constitution of the United States as af

Opinion of the Court.

fecting interstate commerce in an essential and vital part. But whether the right to transport an article of commerce from one State to another included by necessary implication the right of the consignee to sell it in unbroken packages at the place where the transportation terminated was not decided. In Brown v. Maryland, it was said that the right of transportation did include the right to sell, as to foreign commerce, and in the course of his opinion Chief Justice Marshall said that the conclusion would be the same in the case of commerce among the States; but as it was not necessary to express any opinion upon the point, it was simply held in the Bowman case that the power to regulate or forbid the sale of a commodity after it had been brought into a State does not \ carry with it the right and power to prevent its introduction by transportation from another State.

The case of Leisy v. Hardin, 135 U. S. 100, 124, went a step further than the Bowman case, and held that the importer had the right to sell in a State into which he brought the article from another State in the original packages or kegs, unbroken and unopened, notwithstanding a statute of the State prohibiting the sale of such articles except for the purposes therein named and under a license from the State. Such a statute was held to be unconstitutional as repugnant to the clause of the Constitution granting power to Congress to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States. Mr. Chief Justice Fuller, in speaking for the court, said: "Under our decision in Bowman v. Chicago & Northwestern Railway, they had the right to import this beer into that State, and in the view which we have expressed, they had the right to sell it, by which act alone it would become mingled in the common mass of property within the State. Up to that point of time, we hold that in the absence of Congressional permission to do so, the State had no power to interfere, by seizure or any other action, in prohibition of importation and sale by the foreign or non-resident importer." The right of the State to prohibit the sale in the original package was denied in the absence of any law of Congress upon the subject permitting the State to prohibit such sale.

Opinion of the Court.

There is no such law of Congress relating to articles like oleomargarine. Such articles are therefore in like condition as were the liquors in the cases above cited.

Subsequent to the decision in the Leisy case and on the 8th of August, 1890, c. 728, 26 Stat. 313, Congress passed an act commonly known as the Wilson act, which provided that upon the arrival in any State or Territory of the intoxicating liquors transported therein they should be subject to the operation and effect of the laws of the State or Territory enacted in the exercise of its police power to the same extent and in the same manner as though such liquors had been produced in such State or Territory, and that they should not be exempt therefrom by reason of being introduced therein in original packages or otherwise. This was held to be a valid and constitutional exercise of the power conferred upon Congress. In re Rahrer, Petitioner, 140 U. S. 545. In the absence of Congressional legislation, therefore, the right to import a lawful article of commerce from one State to another continues until a sale in the original package in which the article was introduced into the State.

The case of Emert v. Missouri, 156 U. S. 296, involved the validity of a statute of Missouri providing that peddlers of goods, going from place to place within the State to sell them, should take out and pay for licenses. The statute was held not to violate the commerce clause of the Constitution of the United States because it made no discrimination between residents or products of the State and those of other States. The conviction of the plaintiff in error for a violation of the statute was upheld, although he was an agent of a corporation which manufactured the property in another State and sent it to him to sell as its agent. It was held to be within the police power of the State to regulate the occupation of itinerant peddlers and to compel them to obtain licenses to practise their trade, and such power had been exerted from the earliest times. The remark of Chief Justice Marshall in Brown v. Maryland, supra, was quoted, that "the right of sale may very well be annexed to importation, without annexing to it also the privilege of using the officers licensed by the