postmasters and postoffices by the general substitution of the delivery system, nor does it credit the advantage which will naturally follow the rapid increase in the amount of mail matter delivered each year.

Considering the system of free rural delivery as a whole and including all the routes established by the 84 carriers in 44 states, the average cost for delivery per piece of mail has been 1.68 cents. The population thus served has numbered 22,772 and the number of pieces delivered 836,308 from October, 1896, to June 30, 1897. The average pay of the carriers has been $283.61 per year; the average area served by each carrier has been 20.93 miles; the average number of miles traveled by each carrier has been 22.

Of the manner in which this work has been accomplished, the Assistant Postmaster General writes as follows:

"According to the varying conditions of the country traversed the rural carriers perform their services on horseback, or riding in buckboards, buggies, two wheeled carts or on bicycles. In some states they have to cross farms and pull down bars and ride over some fields to deliver and collect their mails. In no instance has any serious complaint been made of this invasion of private rights. On the contrary the co-operation of the communities served has in every instance been cheerfully and effectively given. The farmers, at their own cost, have put up boxes at cross roads and at all other convenient places for the reception of the mails."

The official report suggests that farmers may, of their own volition, materially assist the system by combining the collection of mail matter by the same carrier who delivers it, and gives the following as an instance of what has already been done in this direction: "This plan has actually been put into operation by the citizens of one district of Massachusetts, on their own responsibility, they paying the mail messenger $2.00 per annum for each family thus accommodated by him."

The Assistant Postmaster General thus alludes to two of the hindrances which have been noted in the experimental delivery system: "There has been, and naturally so in some localities, a hesitation on the part of the community to break in upon their long-established custom of riding to town for their mails when they have no assurance as to how long free delivery is to last. Then again, postmasters of the fourth class, who are paid according to the amount of mail matter cancelled in their offices, do not find it to their interest to encourage their patrons to transfer their mail delivery to the neighboring free delivery route. It is asking too much of human nature to expect them to divert from themselves a part of their income purely for the betterment of the service. That so much has been accomplished in spite of these retarding influences indicates much greater possibilities for the future."

3--6--97

The report from which I have quoted contains numerous items of history which are interesting to the student after information relative to the increase of our postal system; referring to the olden time manner of performing the work, he writes:

"Less than four years ago the aged postmaster of an Ohio town. then still holding the office, at the end of sixty-four years of continuous service, was able to recall the time when the charge for one letter to be transmitted 400 miles or more was 25 cents, and in commutation of this service he had at different times received, as a just equivalent for the postage, either two bushels of oats, five dozen eggs, four pounds of butter, three bushels of wheat or one and one-fourth pounds of common wool."

A general summary of the report of the Assistant Postmaster General leads one to the conclusion that the results of free mail delivery thus far have been such as clearly indicate that, with a proper appropriation from Congress, it will become a permanent arrangement for all thickly populated rural districts, and that it is capable of a greater extension than is at present thought to be either possible or practicable.

THE INTER-STATE COMMERCE ACT.

All of the acts which have been assigned to the Department for en forcement partake more of the nature of police regulations than of ordinary trade laws. The Pure Food Law of 1895 is clearly of this character; the vinegar law of 1897 and the cheese law of the same year, are also of the same character, and an examination of the principles which underlie them will convince any one that their enforcement is but the legal exercise of the police powers of the State.

This difference in the character of the two classes of laws is not properly understood, and is thus explained by Judge Williams, in his opinion in the case of the Commonwealth vs. George Schollenberger:

"His business is intra-state and not inter-state. Our act of 1885, under which this case arises, is not a trade regulation. It is a police law. This court has so repeatedly held, and our view of it was expressedly confirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States in Powell vs. the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (127 U. S., 678), a case which turned upon that single question. It does not undertake to deal with the importer from any other country or state, but with the manufacturers and dealers within the State. It prohibits the manufacture and sale of oleomargarine within the limits of the State. It

also prohibits the sale, the offer to sell and having in possession with intent to sell the same as an article of food. It lays its prohibition on those who are fairly subject to its jurisdiction and no others. We have then, a valid police law, so declared by the highest tribunal of the land, which prohibits the sale of oleomargarine as an article of food within the State."

In the enforcement of all laws above alluded to, the Department has met the question of the effect of inter-state commerce laws upon sales of the prohibited article or with sales contrary to the provisions of the act, and in all cases our legal advisers have taken the position that the inter-state commerce acts protect articles of commerce in transit from one state to another until they are offered for sale in the state in which their sale is in violation of law, and that this protection then ceases, and they become a portion of the general commodities of the state and subject to all of the restrictions which would have, under similar circumstances, governed the offer and sale of similar articles manufactured in the State.

Taking this view of the case, the Department held that the interstate commerce law would protect cheese shipped into our State from New York and Ohio until it was offered for sale in our State, and that the protection there ceased, and our agents have been instructed to apply the provisions of the act of 1897 just as they would have done had the cheese been manufactured in Pennsylvania.

The claim has been made that a box of cheese was an "original" package, and that, as such, it can be sold and re-sold until the package is opened and the cheese divided, but this view of the case has not been accepted by our legal advisers, and in all cases the provisions of the law have been enforced fully and in precisely the same manner as if the cheese or other commodity had been made in our State.

In referring to the effect of the inter-state commerce law as it relates to the police regulations of the State, Judge Williams (Commonwealth vs. George Schollenberger) thus decides:

"If the residence of the dealer could affect the character of his trade, then our police laws, intended to protect our own people, would operate as a discrimination against our own citizens and in favor of the citizens of other states, and would commit to those having no interests in common with us, a most odious monopoly in every kind or form of traffic which our State should attempt to regulate or suppress. Intrenched behind the inter-state commerce clause so construed, citizens of other states could prey upon our people, trample upon our laws and make gain out of a traffic forbidden to our citizens, only to be delivered up absolutely and unconditionally to them. It would require only that the citizens of another state should establish a store in some of our towns or cities, or in all of them, and conduct a local business to meet the local demand, and when called upon by the officers

of the law, make reply that he made the goods in some other state, and, as a manufacturer, supplied himself as a local dealer with wares of a foreign state.

In the case of Commonwealth vs. George Schollenberger, it was charged and admitted that the defendant sold a ten pound package of oleomargarine to a boarding house keeper and that the package had not been opened or broken; the defense claimed that it was, therefore, an original package and not subject to State laws. In his opinion on the case, Judge Williams used the following language:

"If a pint bottle of whiskey is an original package under the protection of Congress, and can be sold as such regardless of the police legislation of the State, we cannot punish the sale to a minor, to a person of known intemperate habits, to a lunatic, on election days or on the Sabbath. All power over the traffic for police purposes is gone, and why? Because the power to regulate inter-state commerce, intended to guard against stoppage along state lines, has been extended by construction until it is made to reach and protect retail traffic carried on within any state, if the things sold have come into the retailer's store from a non-resident manufacturer or shipper. If this be sound construction, then the power of a state to restrict or prohibit an injurious traffic does not depend upon the deleterious character of the thing sold, or the manner in which sales are made, or the public or private injury inflicted by the sale, but on the manner in which the thing sold came into the possesion of the seller."

In view of these and other constructions which have been placed upon similar laws, the Department has held that, while it could not compel a manufacturer of cheese in New York or Ohio to comply with our State law in relation to branding, yet it could with justice compel the dealer in Pennsylvania to see to it that the cheese is properly branded before it is offered for sale or sold, and in doing this it will always be found that the Department has, where the selection was possible, taken that course which would inflict the minimum of hardship upon the manufacturer and dealer alike, and that in every case the most liberal construction of the law possible has been taken advantage of in order to cause the least inconvenience to those interested and at the same time carry out the primary object of the act in protecting the purchaser and consumer.

In the recent case of the Armour Packing Company against the Dairy Commissioner of the State of Minnesota, in which the main contention was that the state law requiring that oleomargarine should be colored pink was unconstitutional, Judge Lochren of the United States Court for the Minnesota district, charged as follows:

"The state has undoubtedly the power of inspection and of confiscation in respect to articles of food put upon the market which are deleterious and unwholesome. And I think it may go further in re

spect to articles of food and take effective measures to prevent the people from being deceived and imposed upon; not only by requiring the packages containing an imitation article of food to be so marked as to disclose its character, but may also require that the article itself, shall, in a designated way, be also marked for the same purpose."

In this case the Armour Packing Company, had in violation of law, sold oleomargarine either not colored at all or colored yellow in imitation of butter, and, during the hearing the question of inter-state commerce regulations having come up, Judge Lochren used the following explicit and unmistakable language:

"It is not invalid as interfering with the exclusive power of Congress to regulate commerce among the several states. The act does not interfere with oleomargarine as long as it remains an article of commerce and is being handled or stored as such. It is only after it has ceased to be an article of commerce and become a part of the property of the state, and as such is being sold or kept and exposed for sale that it comes under the act, which makes no distinction in favor of the article manufactured in this state or against that which is brought from other states.

"The serious question in respect to this act is whether it is a valid exercise of the police power of the state to require that all imitations of butter intended to be substitutes for that article shall be colored bright pink. It is certain, and not denied, that butterine or oleomargarine is a substitute for butter and so intended. It is equally certain that it is made in imitation of butter, even in color, so that it cannot, upon ordinary inspection and use, be distinguished from it, and that it is calculated and intended to deceive, not the purchasers in original packages, but the purchasers of small amounts at retail, and the consumers, into the belief that the article is in fact butter, is clear beyond doubt."

The decision of the Minnesota court, while it will have its effect in establishing the validity of laws requiring that oleomargarine shall be made of some distinguishing color, also conveys a valuable lesson to the Dairy and Food Commissioners of the various states. In this case the Dairy Commissioner seized and confiscated the oleomargarine which was involved in the suit without any procedure through the medium of a court, and the suit was brought by the Armour Packing Company to recover damages for the seizure. The court gave judgment against the Dairy Commissioner and in favor of the Armour Packing Company in the amount of $2,182.00 and the costs of suit, solely because the mode of procedure in the condemnation and confis cation had not been regular and through the medium of the proper court. The judge held that while the state had an undoubted right under the law to seize and confiscate the goods under consideration, this act could only be accomplished in a legal manner, and that a summary confiscation was not legal and would not be allowed.