Ragio v. State

• Decision Date: 17 January 1888
• Citation: 6 S.W. 401
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court
• Parties: RAGIO <I>v.</I> STATE.

Page 401

6 S.W. 401

RAGIO

v. STATE.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

January 17, 1888.

Error to criminal court for district of Davidson and Rutherford; G. S. RIDLEY, Judge.

Andrew J. Caldwell, for plaintiffs in error. Atty. Gen. G. W. Pickle, for the State.

TURNEY, C. J.

Plaintiff in error was indicted for shaving a customer on Sunday, in violation of the act entitled "An act making it a misdemeanor to carry on barbering on Sunday;" and it is "that it shall be a misdemeanor for any one engaged in the business of a barber to shave, shampoo, cut hair, or keep open their bath-rooms on Sunday; that any one found guilty of violating the first section shall be fined," etc.

Section 17, art. 2, Const., ordains: "No bill shall become a law which embraces more than one subject, to be expressed in the title." We think the act obnoxious to the objection of non-conformity to the constitution. We are unable to understand that "barbering" and bathing, or barber-shop and bath-house, are either synonymous or convertible terms. The subject in the title is "barbering." The subjects in the body of the act are "barbering and bath-rooms." There is nothing in the proof that in anywise tends to make a barber-shop a bath-room, or show that the term "barbering" includes it. While it may be, as argued,—but of which there is no proof,—that a bath-room is a common attachment to a barber-shop in cities, it is not commonly true of towns and villages. When we see two things so distinct in their uses, we are constrained to hold them to be two subjects, in the absence of the proof of custom making them several parts of one head, and together constituting one whole, and therefore properly "one subject" for legislation. In our towns and villages we know that, frequently, post-offices are kept in stores, law offices, the offices of physicians, drug establishments, shoe-shops, etc.; that we often see one man a druggist, a dry-goods merchant, a seller of agricultural implements, a news-dealer, and retailer of liquors, cigars, etc. Now, suppose the legislature shall see proper to enact a law entitled "An act to make it a misdemeanor to retail liquors on Sunday," and, in the body of the act, should declare it a misdemeanor for any one to engage in the business of tippling, to retail any liquors, drugs, boots, shoes, dry goods, agricultural implements, newspapers, periodicals, pamphlets, or cigars, etc., on Sunday,—could it be said, because it was the custom for one man to pursue the several businesses, that therefore all came under the head...