Mulford v. Smith
| Decision Date | 07 October 1938 |
| Docket Number | No. 97.,97. |
| Citation | 24 F. Supp. 919 |
| Parties | MULFORD et al. v. SMITH et al. (UNITED STATES, Intervener). |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Middle District of Georgia |
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A. J. Little, of Valdosta, Ga., for plaintiffs.
Franklin & Eberhardt (O. W. Franklin and H. C. Eberhardt), of Valdosta, Ga., for original defendants.
John S. L. Yost, Sp. Asst. to Atty. Gen., and T. Hoyt Davis, U. S. Dist. Atty., of Macon, Ga., for the United States.
Before SIBLEY, Circuit Judge, and DEAVER and KENNAMER, District Judges.
Some of the reasons supporting the foregoing Conclusions of Law may profitably be stated.
It is mainly urged for plaintiffs that the part of the Act in controversy is not a regulation of interstate and foreign commerce but is a regulation of all sales of tobacco by producers, whether for export from the State or for manufacture and consumption within the State, and whether large or small; and that the real purpose and effect of it is to regulate and restrict the production of tobacco, which is a local activity. We may concede that agriculture, mining, manufacture and the like are in themselves local activities, the regulation of which generally belongs to the States and not to Congress. So are sales made within the State not intended at the time to result in removing the goods from the State. But it may not be maintained that such intrinsically local matters do not under some circumstances become so interwoven with interstate and foreign commerce as to render it necessary and proper for Congress to affect or control them in order to regulate the interstate and foreign commerce which springs from them. The power of Congress to regulate such commerce is paramount and is very broad. If regulation of any kind is needed, the Congress and not the States must furnish it; and it may be of any kind not prohibited by other constitutional provisions. A State prior to the Union would so have regulated by virtue of its general police power. After the Union, this sphere of the police power vests in the Congress. Within its sphere, the power of Congress is in its nature a police power, to be exerted for the public good and in any way, not prohibited, which Congress deems calculated to achieve the desired regulatory effect. This may involve, as above stated, the affecting or controlling what would usually pertain to the State police power. Thus, intra-state rates may be controlled by Congress when so involved with interstate commerce as to make it necessary. Possession of intoxicating liquor under prohibition was controlled by Congress though its constitutional power extended only to the manufacture, transportation and sale thereof. Very extensive regulation of the production of distilled liquors has always been allowed to secure payment of the federal taxes on the liquors, though such production would otherwise be only of State concern. But the law in controversy does not directly regulate the production of tobacco. It does not penalize or forbid the production of any amount the grower pleases. He may do what he likes with it except to market it. Since most tobacco is grown only to be sold, the inability to sell the excess of a quota except at a loss at least of all profit would tend to and probably would result in the non-production of the excess so far as the grower can prevent it. But the Act directly deals only with the marketing, and not with the planting or production of tobacco.
Since marketing is an act of commerce, like transportation, if marketing in interstate and foreign commerce alone had been regulated, there would be no fair doubt of the power of Congress generally to regulate. The trouble arises from the inclusion of all sales of tobacco by producers. Congress rests that inclusion on its right to regulate not particular sales as such, but the commerce in tobacco as a great whole, because it is overwhelmingly a matter of interstate and foreign traffic, and so unified in fact as that it must be dealt with generally and on a nationwide scale. The price to producers, the stability of which is asserted by Congress to be a main concern both because the support of hundreds of thousands of persons depends on it, and because it in turn controls the amount of tobacco which will be grown and if too low may destroy the industry altogether, is a countrywide matter. No State acting alone could wisely or effectively regulate the situation. Conflict and reprisals would almost certainly follow State effort. In Georgia all tobacco, except a negligible amount, is sold for export from the State, and this is predominantly true in all the States which produce tobacco. The commerce in it is in fact overwhelmingly interstate and foreign. The stable supply to meet the stable demand and to result in a stable price which Congress seeks to achieve can in its judgment practically be reached only by a countrywide regulation controlling the entire market. Courts may not overrule the considered judgment of Congress on the point, where the conclusion is not clearly irrational and arbitrary. They must...
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Mulford v. Smith
...50 Stat. 751, U.S.C. Supp. III, Tit. 28, § 401, 28 U.S.C.A. § 401. 10 Ibid, U.S.C. Supp. III, Tit. 28, § 380a, 28 U.S.C.A. § 380a. 11 D.C., 24 F.Supp. 919. 12 U.S.C. Tit. 28, § 41(1), 28 U.S.C.A. § 41(1). 13 U.S.C. Tit. 28, § 41(8), 28 U.S.C.A. § 41(8). 14 U.S.C. Tit. 26, § 1543, 26 U.S.C.A......
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Booth v. Montgomery Ward & Co.
...S.Ct. 648, 651, 83 L.Ed. 1092, in which the Supreme Court of the United States sustained the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court, 24 F.Supp. 919, of a tobacco producers' suit challenging the validity of the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, 7 U.S.C.A. § 1281 et seq., on the ground......
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Luke v. Review Committee, Civ. A. No. 6202.
...it is deemed in a particular case to work an inequitable result." The Act has also been sustained as it relates to tobacco. Mulford v. Smith, D.C., 24 F.Supp. 919; 307 U.S. 38, 59 S.Ct. 648, 83 L.Ed. 1092. Not only has the Act been sustained in regard to wheat and tobacco, but also in regar......
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Whittenburg v. United States
...against similar objections in Wallace v. Currin, 95 F.2d 856, in the Fourth Circuit, and by a Court of three judges in Mulford et al. v. Smith et al., D.C., 24 F.Supp. 919. We need say little additionally, and will content ourselves with a brief statement of the principles on which we think......