United States v. Aultman Co.

• Decision Date: 19 February 1906
• Docket Number: 3,118.
• Citation: 143 F. 922
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. AULTMAN CO.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Ohio

143 F. 922

UNITED STATES v. AULTMAN CO.

No. 3,118.

United States District Court, N.D. Ohio, Eastern Division.

February 19, 1906

At Law. The plaintiff and defendant having rested, the testimony being all before the court, counsel for the defendant moved the court for a nonsuit, and that the court direct the jury to return a verdict for the defendant.

ALIENS-- CONTRACT LABOR LAW-- PERSONS TO WHOM APPLICABLE.

The alien contract labor law, as amended in 1903 (Act March 3 1903, 32 Stat. 1214, Sec. 4, c. 1012 (U.S.Comp.St.Supp. 1905 p. 277)), does not apply to a man who entered the United States as an immigrant from Germany when young and remained continuously domiciled and working in this country for 12 or more years, although without becoming naturalized, and who then went temporarily into Canada, where he had been for two weeks when the contract alleged to be in violation of the statute was made.

John J Sullivan, U.S. Atty.

Lynch Day & Day and Kline, Tolles & Goff, for defendant.

TAYLER District Judge (orally).

This action is based on sections 4 and 5 of the act to regulate the immigration of aliens into the United States. Act March 3, 1903, c. 1012, 32 Stat. 1214 (U.S.Comp.St.Supp. 1905, p. 277). The claim is that the defendant, in violation of that law, solicited and procured the importation of one Hermann, an alien, from Canada. Since the observation of the district attorney as to changes in the law since its original passage, or since the time when the decisions referred to were rendered, I have looked at the statute with a view of finding out what changes were made as respects the question involved in this case, but I do not find that there has been any such change. There have been advances made in the law, with a view of more fully carrying out its purposes, and especially the law has been carefully amended since those decisions. This is an important circumstance, as will hereafter be noted. Section 4 provides that it shall be unlawful for any person, company, partnership, or corporation, in any manner whatsoever, to prepay the transportation or in any way to assist or encourage the importation or migration of any alien into the United States, in pursuance of any offer, solicitation, promise, or agreement, parol or special, express or implied, made previous to the importation of such alien, to perform labor or service of any kind, skilled or unskilled, in the United States. The law has been since its original passage just as it is now in section 4, except that it adds unskilled labor to the classes covered by it, and has more carefully disclosed the unlawful methods by which the purpose sought to be accomplished may be carried out, by adding the word 'solicitation.' So that section 4 in its present form represents the results of the experience of intelligent men, determined to see that the purpose of the law was expressed in the law itself, and carried out. Then section 5 provides, in substance, for the penalty which shall be incurred for every violation of any of the provisions of section 4 of this act.

Now, the statute seems to be clear and explicit in its terms; and it was not until the witness Hermann had testified that he had come into this country from Germany in 1891, when he was quite young, and had remained constantly in this country, working at his trade, and had remained constantly in this country, working at his trade almost all the time, never outside of the country until a couple of weeks before this transaction occurred which is the subject of this petition, that my attention was arrested and directed to the question as to whether or not such a person was included within the terms of this act. I say 'arrested,' because this provision of the law has been familiar to me for a long time, though not in its exact phraseology, and I have been especially familiar with, and deeply interested in, the purpose for which the law was passed, and had a familiarity, greater or less, with several of the amendments, including the last one, which was passed in March, 1903. So, as I say, my attention was arrested by that situation, and I tried, as well as I could, to reason out the proposition whether or not a man with this history was to be included within the provisions of this law, and a contract made with him, under the circumstances that existed here, prohibited by the law. Now, I thought that I understood what the purpose of this law was. It was intended, primarily, to prevent persons who are dissatisfied with the wage level of this country going into some other country, where the wage level was lower and where the promise of higher wages in this country would be extremely attractive, and where, on that account, it would be easy to make a contract with a person thus working for lower wages to come into this country and work for higher wages, with the result that, by making a contract at a rate of wages higher than the rate at which the alien was working, and lower than the prevailing, and through our civilization the necessarily prevailing rate of wages, the wage level in this country determines the level of civilization in this country, very serious wrong would be done, not merely to labor, but to society, which, in its units, is almost all made up of labor. That was the general condition of things which demanded this legislation as a protection to society, and to the civilization which depends upon the amount that men earn, and therefore the amount that men spend. We are all familiar with the rule that, where it is possible to do so, a law must be construed in accordance with its spirit, and that a penal law is to be strictly construed. Those are elementary propositions.

The first case that I found during the recess was the case of Moffitt v. United States, 128 F. 375, 63 C.C.A. 117. That was a case under the immigration law; and the syllabus, which fairly states the substance of the decision in that respect, says:

'The immigration laws of the United States, in so far as relates to punishment for their violation, are highly penal, and are to be strictly construed, and their provisions applied only to cases clearly within their terms and their spirit, construed as a whole.' 'We are of opinion,' says the Circuit Court of Appeals in the text, 'that this act clearly relates to immigration, and is leveled only against immigrants, although neither of these words is expressly mentioned in section 10 of the act. Section 3 excludes the encouragement of immigration to this country of aliens by promise of employment. Section 4 makes it unlawful for steamships or transportation companies or vessel owners, by writing or otherwise, to solicit or encourage the immigration of aliens into the United States, except in certain specified particulars. Section 6 forbids the bringing into the United States of any aliens not lawfully entitled to enter, and punishes the offense,' and so on. And on page 380 of 128 Fed., and page 122 of 63 C.C.A.:

'Where the intent of the statute is plain, nothing is left to construction; but where the mind of the court must labor to discover the design of the Legislature it seizes upon everything from which it can be derived. In this search courts should not overlook nor ignore the well-known canon of construction, which often proves to be a safe guide in determining the meaning of the statutes. The rule is universal, in cases of this character, that the evil which Congress intended to remedy must be looked at. All the circumstances, conditions, and contemporaneous events which induced Congress to pass the law must be considered and given due weight.'

Now the law, in respect to its application, what persons it applied to, has been considered in that sense in two aspects: First, to define what kind of persons, measured by their employment, are included; and, second, to define what is meant by aliens or immigrants. Those two phases of qualities which must inhere in the person whose contract is subject to consideration have been considered. On the first proposition we have the case of Holy Trinity Church v. United States, 143 U.S. 457, 12 Sup.Ct. 511, 36 L.Ed. 226. That case passed upon the question of the kind of employment or work which the person who it was said was being imported in violation of law was engaged in. That is not our question here, but naturally the principles of law that govern that case would govern here. This is a very instructive and well-considered opinion by Mr. Justice Brewer, in which he held that a minister of a church was not included within the law. He is now excluded from its operation by the amendment to the law; but at that time there was no such exclusion. A contract had been made in England with a minister to go to New York and take charge of the spiritual affairs of a certain church. The courts below held that the contract was in violation of this law, and the case went to the Supreme Court for determination. Justice Brewer says (on page 458 of 143 U.S., and page 511 of 12 Sup.Ct. (36 L.Ed. 226)):

'It must be conceded that the act of the corporation (that is, of the church corporation) is within the letter of this section, for the relation of rector to his church is one of service, and implies labor on the one side with compensation on the other. Not only are the general words 'labor' and 'service' both used, but also, as it were to guard against any narrow interpretation and emphasize a breadth of meaning, to them is added 'of any kind'; and, further, as noticed by the circuit judge in his opinion, the fifth sec

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