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was made much of in the Cravens Case. The effort has been to give a special locality to the contracts and determine their applicatory law, and, indeed, to a centralization of control, to employ local agents but to limit their power and judgment. To accomplish the purpose there is necessarily a great and frequent use of the mails, and this is elaborately dwelt on by the insurance company in its pleading and argument, it being contended that this and the transmission of premiums and the amounts of the policies constitute a 'current of commerce among the States.' This use of the mails is necessary, it may be, to the centralization of the control and supervision of the details of the business; it is not essential to its character. And we may say, in passing, that such effort has led to regulating legislation, but that it cannot determine its validity, was decided in the Cravens Case. See also Equitable Life Society v. Clements, 140 U. S. 226.

This legislation is in effect attacked by the contention of the insurance company. We have already pointed out that if insurance is commerce and becomes interstate commerce whenever it is between citizens of different States, then all control over it is taken from the States and the legislative regulations which this court has heretofore sustained must be declared invalid.

The number of transactions do not give the business any other character than magnitude. If it did, the department store which deals with every article which covers or adorns the human body, or, it may be, nourishes it, would have one character while its neighbor, humble in the variety and extent of its stock, would have another. Nor, again, does the use of the mails determine anything. Certainly not that which takes place before and after the transaction between the plaintiff and its agents in secret or in regulation of their relations. But put agents to one side and suppose the insurance company and the applicant negotiating or consummating a contract. That they may

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live in different States and hence use the mails for their communications does not give character to what they do; cannot make a personal contract the transportation of commodities from one State to another, to paraphrase Paul v. Virginia. Such might be incidents of a sale of real estate (certainly nothing can be more immobile). Its transfer may be negotiated through the mails and completed by the transmission of the consideration and the instrument of transfer also through the mails.

It is contended that the policies are subject to sale and transfer, may be used for collateral security and other commercial purposes. This may be, but this use of them is after their creation, a use by the insured, not by the insurer. The quality that is thus ascribed to them may be ascribed to any instrument evidencing a valuable right. The argument was anticipated in Paul v. Virginia, citing Nathan v. Louisiana, where, as we have seen, a tax on money and exchange brokers who dealt in the purchase and sale of foreign bills of exchange was sustained as not conflicting with the constitutional power of Congress to regulate commerce among the States or with foreign nations.

It is contended that Paul v. Virginia and the cases which follow it must be limited, as it is contended "the facts therein did limit them, to intrastate, not interstate, contracts," and that if they be not so limited the Lottery Case, 188 U. S. 321, and International Textbook Co. v. Pigg, 217 U. S. 91, cannot stand.

The basis of this contention necessarily is the insistence that the contracts in Paul v. Virginia and the succeeding cases were intrastate contracts while the contracts in the case at bar are interstate contracts. But this is a false characterization of the contracts. cases is that contracts of insurance all, neither state nor interstate.

The decision of the are not commerce at This is the obstacle

to the contention of the insurance company. The com

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pany realizes it to be an obstacle and has attempted to remove it by detailing the manner of conducting its business as demonstrating that its policies are interstate contracts. We have replied to the attempt and shown that its manner of business has no such effect. It follows necessarily, therefore, that neither the Lottery Case nor the Pigg Case impugns the authority or the application of the cited cases. They, the Lottery Case and the Pigg Case, were concerned with transactions which involved the transportation of property and were not mere personal contracts.

There are cognate cases to the cited cases, of contracts incident to commerce but not of themselves commerce. In Williams v. Fears, 179 U. S. 270, there was levied by the State of Georgia a tax upon each emigrant agent or employer or employé of such agent, doing business in the State. The law imposing the tax was attacked as a violation of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution of the United States. Commerce was defined, quoting Mr. Justice Field, in Mobile County v. Kimball, 102 U. S. 691, 702, to "consist in intercourse and traffic, including in these terms navigation and the transportation and transit of persons and property, as well as the purchase, sale, and exchange of commodities." The court considered the definition comprehensive enough for the purpose of the case and, testing its application, said, by Mr. Chief Justice Fuller: "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." The conclusion was supported by cases, among others, Paul v. Virginia and Hooper v. California. On the authority of the same cases and Life Insurance Co. v. Cravens, in Ware & Leland v. Mobile County, 209 U. S. 405, it was held that contracts by brokers for the sale of

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cotton for future delivery, where the transactions were closed by contracts completed and executed in one State although the orders were received from another State, were legally subject to a tax. Such contracts, it was said, were not "the subjects of interstate commerce, any more than in the insurance cases, where the policies are ordered and delivered in another State than that of the residence and office of the company."

In Engel v. O'Malley, 219 U. S. 128, a law of New York forbade individuals or partnerships to engage in the business of receiving deposits of money for safe keeping or for the purpose of transmission to another, or for any other purpose, without a license from the Comptroller. It was attacked as a violation of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. The case was decided to be similar in principle to Ware & Leland v. Mobile County and Williams v. Fears, and the law was sustained.

Further discussion, we think, is unnecessary, and we have gone beyond the citing of the authoritative cases only in deference to the able and earnest argument of counsel.

Judgment affirmed.

MR. JUSTICE HUGHES and MR. JUSTICE VAN DEVANTER dissent.

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GREEY, TRUSTEE IN BANKRUPTCY OF SCHWABKEPNER COMPANY, v. DOCKENDORFF.

APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT.

No. 544. Argued December 2, 1913.-Decided December 15, 1913.

No sufficient reason being shown for departing from it, this court follows its rule of not disturbing findings made by the Master, the court of first instance and the Circuit Court of Appeals.

Where the goods never would have come into the bankrupt's hands, had he not promised to give a lien thereon to one making the advances necessary for obtaining them, there is no reason why the rights of general creditors without liens should intervene to defeat security given in good faith and before there was any knowledge of insolvency. National City Bank v. Hotchkiss, ante, p. 50, distinguished.

Secrecy of a lien on goods purchased by advances made by the lienor does not invalidate it where there was no active concealment or any attempt to mislead anyone interested to know the truth, nor does merely keeping silent in such case create an estoppel.

203 Fed. Rep. 475; 121 C. C. A. 597, affirmed.

THE facts, which involve the validity of liens claimed by a creditor on accounts receivable assigned to him by the bankrupt, are stated in the opinion.

Mr. Benjamin G. Paskus, with whom Mr. Ralph Wolf, Mr. James N. Rosenberg and Mr. Garrard Glenn were on the brief, for appellant.

Mr. Julius Henry Cohen, with whom Mr. Gerard B. Townsend and Mr. Theodore B. Richter were on the brief, for appellee.

MR. JUSTICE HOLMES delivered the opinion of the court.

This was a petition by the appellee, Dockendorff, filed in the bankruptcy proceedings against the bankrupt, the VOL. CCXXXI-33

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