ONTARIO.

Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Industries for the Province of Ontario, 1899. 48 pp. (Published by the Ontario Depart

ment of Agriculture.)

This report consists of two parts: Part I, agriculture, 46 pages; Part II, chattel mortgages, 1 page.

AGRICULTURE.-This part of the report contains statistics of the weather, crops, live stock, dairy and apiary products, labor and wages, values of farm property, market prices of agricultural products, etc.

The total value of farm property in 1899 was $947,513,360, of which $563,271,777 represented land, $213,440,281 buildings, $54,994,857 implements, and $115,806,445 live stock. Each of these items shows an increase over the preceding year.

In 1899 farm hands, with board, received an average of $149 per year and farm hands without board $243 per year. The average wages per month for the working season were $15.38 with board and $24.93 without board. Domestic servants received an average of $6.19 per month. The average wages varied but little from those paid in 1898.

CHATTEL MORTGAGES.-During the year ending December 31, 1899, there were on record 18,216 chattel mortgages, representing $11,067,664. This shows a decrease, both in number and amount, when compared with the preceding year. Of the chattel mortgages in 1899, 9,392, representing $2,988,853, were registered against farmers.

QUEENSLAND.

Report of the Officer in Charge, Government Labor Bureau and Relief, for 1898. 16 pp.

The functions of this bureau are those of a government employment and relief agency. By means of labor agents throughout the Colony a weekly record is kept of the condition of the labor market in all parts of the Colony. Registers are also kept of persons seeking employment and of those seeking help. This information is furnished upon application and by publication. The bureau also advances money for fare to persons obtaining employment in distant parts.

The present report, for the calendar year 1898, contains an account of the labor market and government relief and statistical tables showing the demand and supply of labor by occupations and by months and localities, rates of wages paid, the number of families granted government relief, and the expenditure for such relief.

In 1898 6.272 persons were registered as seeking employment, of whom 6,074 either obtained engagements through the bureau or were assisted to reach localities where work was available. The latter are required to refund the money advanced for fare. An average of 297 families were granted government relief during the year. The total

expenditure for relief throughout the Colony during 1898 was £5,872 19s. 2d. ($28,580.75), of which £214 4s. 5d. ($1,042.51) was for passage money and fares.

SWITZERLAND.

Lohnstatistik des Personals der schweizer. Eisenbahnen. Durchgeführt im Auftrag des Eidg. Eisenbahn-Departements von Th. Sourbeck. I. Teil, vii, 302 pp. II. Teil, vii, 265 pp.

This report is the result of an inquiry undertaken by order of the Federal railway department of Switzerland with regard to the number of persons employed in the railway service in Switzerland, their salaries, wages, and social condition. It was undertaken because much misunderstanding existed as to the actual wage conditions of railway employees, and also because it was deemed advantageous on the eve of the transfer of the principal roads to the Government to have accurate statistics regarding the railway personnel for use not only in formulating a compensation act (Besoldungsgesetz), but also in preparing regulations for pension and aid funds for railway employees.

The data relate to conditions on January 1, 1898. Schedules of inquiry were distributed by the railway authorities among their respective employees, and the schedules returned were revised by these authorities before being tabulated. Part I of the present report relates to salaried employees and wage workers employed by contract, while Part II relates to other employees and also contains a recapitulation of the whole personnel.

The following table gives a summary of persons employed and their salaries and wages on January 1, 1898:

ANNUAL SALARIES AND WAGES OF RAILWAY EMPLOYEES ON THE RAILWAYS OF SWITZERLAND, JANUARY 1, 1898.

The other data presented in the report relate to the domicile, age, conjugal condition, size of family, education, length of service, previous occupation, yearly earnings at different periods, etc., of employees of Swiss railways. The data are presented, by occupations, for each road and for all roads collectively.

DECISIONS OF COURTS AFFECTING LABOR.

[This subject, begun in Bulletin No. 2, has been continued in successive issues. All material parts of the decisions are reproduced in the words of the courts, indicated when short by quotation marks and when long by being printed solid. In order to save space, immaterial matter, needed simply by way of explanation, is given in the words of the editorial reviser. ]

DECISIONS UNDER STATUTORY LAW.

CONSTITUTIONALITY STATUTE-LICENSE TAX ON EMIGRANT AGENTS- Williams v. Fears, 21 Supreme Court Reporter, page 128.— R. A. Williams was arrested on a warrant issued by the county court of Morgan County, Ga., and placed in the county jail on his failure to give bond pending his trial. Thereupon he made application to the judge of the superior court within and for that county for a writ of habeas corpus by petition, alleging that the warrant under which he was arrested charged him with a violation of the 10th paragraph of section 2 of the general-tax act of Georgia of 1898, and that his restraint was illegal, because that part of the act was in conflict with clause 3 of section 8, and with clause 5 of section 9, of article 1, and with section 2 of article 4 of the Constitution of the United States; and also with the 14th Amendment. The writ of habeas corpus was duly issued, and the application heard on the return thereto, which resulted in the denial of the petition by the superior court, and the remanding of Williams to custody. The case was then carried to the supreme court of Georgia, where, on April 11, 1900, judgment was rendered affirming the judgment of the superior court.

Section 2 of the tax act of 1898, above referred to, provides that in addition to the ad valorem tax on real estate and personal property, as required by the constitution and provided for in the preceding section, the following specific taxes shall be levied and collected for each of said fiscal years 1899 and 1900.”

Then follow paragraphs imposing poll taxes, and taxes on lawyers, etc., the 10th of which reads as follows:

Upon each emigrant agent, or employer or employee of such agents, doing business in this State, the sum of $500 for each county in which such business is conducted.

Section 4 provides, among other things, that "any person failing to register with the ordinary, or, having registered, failing to pay the tax as herein required, shall be liable to indictment for misdemeanor,

and, on conviction, shall be fined not less than double the tax, or be imprisoned as prescribed by section 1039 of volume 3 of the code of 1895, or both, in the discretion of the court."

After the rendition of judgment by the supreme court of the State, Williams carried the case upon a writ of error to the Supreme Court of the United States, which rendered its judgment December 10, 1900, and affirmed the action of the State courts. The following is quoted from the opinion of the United States Supreme Court, which was delivered by Mr. Chief Justice Fuller:

As a preliminary to considering the validity of the provision [of the tax law the court [the supreme court of Georgia], as matter of original definition, and in view of prior legislation (Acts, 1876, p. 17; Acts, 1877, p. 120; Code, 1882, sec. 4598, a, b, c), held that the term "emigrant agent," as used in the general tax act of 1898, meant a person engaged in hiring laborers in Georgia to be employed beyond the limits of that State.

On behalf of plaintiff in error it is insisted that paragraph 10 is in conflict with the 14th Amendment because it restricts the right of the citizen to move from one State to another, and so abridges his privileges and immunities; impairs the natural right to labor, and is class legislation, discriminating arbitrarily and without reasonable basis.

Undoubtedly the right of locomotion, the right to remove from one place to another according to inclination, is an attribute of personal liberty, and the right, ordinarily, of free transit from or through the territory of any State is a right secured by the 14th Amendment and by other provisions of the Constitution.

And so as to the right to contract. The liberty of which the deprivation without due process of law is forbidden, means not only the right of the citizen to be free from the mere physical restraint of his person, as by incarceration, but the term is deemed to embrace the right of the citizen to be free in the enjoyment of all his faculties; to be free to use them in all lawful ways; to live and work where he will; to earn his livelihood by any lawful calling; to pursue any livelihood or avocation, and for that purpose to enter into all contracts which may be proper, necessary, and essential to his carrying out to a successful conclusion the purposes above mentioned;

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although it may be conceded that this right to contract in relation to persons or property or to do business within the jurisdiction of the State may be regulated and sometimes prohibited when the contracts or business conflict with the policy of the State as contained in its statutes." (Allgeyer v. Louisiana, 165 U. S., 589, 591; 41 L. ed., 835, 836: 17 Sup. Ct. Rep., 427; Holden e. Hardy, 169 U. S., 366; 42 L. ed., 780; 18 Sup. Ct. Rep., 383.)

But this act is a taxing act, by the 2d section of which taxes are levied on occupations, including, by paragraph 10, the occupation of hiring persons to labor elsewhere. If it can be said to affect the freedom of egress from the State, or the freedom of contract, it is only incidentally and remotely. The individual laborer is left free to come and go at pleasure, and to make such contracts as he chooses, while those whose business it is to induce persons to enter into labor contracts and to change their location, though left free to contract, are subjected to taxation in respect of their business as other citizens are.

The general legislative purpose is plain, and the intention to prohibit this particular business can not properly be imputed from the amount of the tax payable by those embarked in it, even if we were at liberty on this record to go into that subject.

Nor does it appear to us that the objection of unlawful discrimination is tenable. The point is chiefly rested on the ground that, inasmuch as the business of hiring persons to labor within the State is not subjected to a like tax, the equal protection of the laws secured by the 14th Amendment is thereby denied. We are unable to say that such a discrimination, if it existed, did not rest on reasonable grounds, and was not within the discretion of the State legislature. (American Sugar Ref. Co. v. Louisiana, 179 U. S., —; ante, p. 43; 21 Sup. Ct. Rep., 43, and cases cited.) In fine, we hold that the act does not conflict with the 14th Amendment in the particulars named.

Counsel for plaintiff in error further contends that the imposition of the tax can not be sustained because in contravention of clause 3 of section 8 and clause 5 of section 9, of article 1 of the Constitution. Clause 5 of section 9 provides that "no tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any State." The facts of this case do not bring it within the purview of this prohibition upon the power of Congress, and it need not be considered as a substantive ground of objection. The real question is, Does this law amount to a regulation of commerce among the States? To answer that question in the affirmative is to hold that the emigrant agent is engaged in such commerce, and that this tax is a restriction thereon.

These agents were engaged in hiring laborers in Georgia to be employed beyond the limits of the State. Of course, transportation must eventually take place as the result of such contracts, but it does not follow that the emigrant agent was engaged in transportation or that the tax on his occupation was levied on transportation. In Hooper. California, 155 U. S., 648, 655; 39 L. ed., 297, 300; 5 Inters. Com. Rep., 610; 15 Sup. Ct. Rep., 207, it was held that a section of the Penal Code of California was not a regulation of commerce. Mr. Justice White there adverts to the real distinction on which the general rule and its exceptions are based, "and which consists in the difference between interstate commerce or an instrumentality thereof on the one side, and the mere incidents which may attend the carrying on of such commerce on the other. This distinction has always been carefully observed and is clearly defined by the authorities cited. If the power to regulate interstate commerce applied to all the incidents to which said commerce might give rise and to all contracts which might be made in the course of its transaction, that power would embrace the entire sphere of mercantile activity in any way connected with trade between the States, and would exclude State control over many contracts purely domestic in their nature."

The imposition of this tax falls within the distinction stated. These labor contracts were not in themselves subjects of traffic between the States, nor was the business of hiring laborers so immediately connected with interstate transportation or interstate traffic that it could be correctly said that those who followed it were engaged in interstate commerce, or that the tax on that occupation constituted a burden on such commerce.

Nor was the imposition in violation of section 2 of article 4, as there was no discrimination between the citizens of other States and the citizens of Georgia. Judgment affirmed.