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laws inheres in the body of its citizens speaking through their representatives. So far as the reservations of the tenth amendment (reserving specific powers to states) were qualified by the adoption of the eighteenth amendment, the qualification has been abolished."
Speaking also for Justices Brandeis and Stone, Justice Cardozo delivered a dissenting opinion which quoted from a previous decision that "one branch of the government cannot encroach on the domain of another without danger." He added:
"I cannot rid myself of the conviction that in the imputation to the lawmakers of a purpose not professed, the salutary rule of caution is now forgotten or neglected after all the many protestations of its cogency and virtue."
"Congress may reasonably have believed," Cardozo said, "that in view of the attendant risks, a business carried on illegally and furtively is likely to yield larger profits than one transacted openly by law-abiding men x x x."
Punishing a Nuisance
"A business that is a nuisance, like any other business that is socially undesirable, may be taxed at a higher rate than one legitimate and useful. By classifying in such a mode congress is not punishing for a crime against another government, it is not punishing at all. It is laying an excise upon a business conducted in a particular way with notice to the taxpayer that if he embarks upon that business he will be subject to a special burden."
The federal warehouse case was appealed by the government from a decision by the federal district court for Mississippi dismissing an indictment against Fred Hastings and holding the section of the 1916 act providing for punishment was an invalid extension of federal power.
In a unanimous opinion, Chief Justice Hughes said the indictment should have been dismissed because it did not specify that the cotton alleged to have been removed was intended for interstate or foreign commerce.
"It would need stronger evidence than this act affords," he said, "to justify the conclusion that congress intended that warehousemen, in taking advantage of the federal statute and in issuing warehouse receipts as required by its terms, should submit to federal control the deposits of products and the issue of warehouse receipts in the course of their local business where the products were not stored for interstate or foreign commerce."
The chief justice said the court could not pass at the present stage of proceedings on the constitutionality of the provision for punishing offenders which had been assailed by James M. Beck, a leading member of the American Liberty League, as leading to the "complete centralization of our government so far as trade and industry are affected."
Pamplin Bank Receivers To Make Another Payment (Special to The News)
Pamplin, Dec. 9.—T. R. Pugh, Jr. and J. V. Lewis receivers for the State Bank of Pamplin, have announced that a ten per cent payment will be made immediately. Checks will be mailed today and tomorrow. Since it closed its doors in September, 1931, the State Bank of Pamplin has made two ten per cent payments and one twenty per cent payment, the ten per cent payment which is being made at this time making a total of fifty per cent which has been refunded to the depositors of this defunct institution.
The present average life of automobiles is 8 1-4 years.