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Opinion of Strong, Davis, and Field, JJ., dissenting.

the act did not prescribe a tax upon dividends made after that date, as I have endeavored to maintain, it was not the duty of these defendants in error to pay to the collector five per cent. of the dividends made by them in 1870, and they had no authority to detain any portion of such dividends. from their stockholders. On the contrary, it was their duty to pay over the entire dividends to the shareholders, who acquired a vested right in them as soon as they were made, and calling upon them to pay a tax on those dividends was an attempt to enforce a duty that had no existence. It was substantially an effort to enforce a penalty for an omission to do that which they had no right to do, a penalty equal to the amount of a five per cent. tax on the dividends, with an additional five per cent. thereon. The companies, at most, were merely agents of the government to collect a tax from the shareholders and pay it over. Their liability, if any, arose out of an unlawful failure to discharge these duties. But there was no such duty when the dividends were made. Surely the declaratory act of 1870 cannot be regarded as operating retrospectively to make the act, or omission, of these companies unlawful, and punishable as an offence, when the act, or omission, was innocent at the time when it occurred. Were it conceded that the construction given by Congress is binding in all cases where it would not disturb vested rights, or operate practically as an ex post facto law, it can have no application to such a case as the present.

Of course, I am not to be understood as maintaining that when the declaratory act was passed Congress had no power to impose a tax upon any income that had been received before that time. What I mean to assert is that it cannot be admitted Congress intended by the act of 1870 to subject any institution to a penalty for not having, before its passage, collected and paid a tax which had not been imposed. The act, therefore, in my judgment, has no application to the present cases, and I think the judgments should be

affirmed.

Statement of the case.

WASHING-MACHINE COMPANY v. TOOL COMPANY.

1. The reissued letters-patent (No. 2829) for a new and improved clotheswringer, granted to Sylvanus Walker, assignee, on the 31st day of December, 1867, construed to be for a U-shaped yoke or frame for supporting a wringing-machine, and for the combination of such a yoke with a clamping device, when employed to hold a clothes-wringer to the side of a wash-tub, and the U form of the frame is essential to it. 2. The use of a portable support for a wringing mechanism which has some of the features of the patentee's device, but which has not the U-formed yoke, or frame, is, therefore, no infringement of the patent.

APPEAL from the Circuit Court for the District of Rhode Island.

The Washing Machine Company, assignee of Sylvanus Walker, this last being assignee of one Sergeant, filed a bill in the court below against the Providence Tool Company, for an infringement of Division No. 2829, of a patent for an improvement in clothes-wringers. The original patent was granted to Sergeant, July 27th, 1858, and was reissued in two divisions, the one in suit being dated December 31st, 1867. Although the matter which was in issue in the present suit was confined, so far as the complainant's title was concerned, to the reissue No. 2829, it may be well to describe the wringing-machine which was the subject of Sergeant's original patent, and out of which the invention patented in the reissue No. 2829 was carved.

The original machine belonged to the class of clotheswringers long known as "twist wringers." In these, clothes are wrung by twisting them into a rope in the same manner as without a machine the washerwoman twists them by hand. This sort of machine differs from another and wellknown class of wringers, in which "squeezing rollers" squeeze out by pressure water from clothes passed between them. Both sorts of machines had been in use for many years prior to the patent to Sergeant.

In the original machine of Sergeant, Figure 1 represents a yoke-frame of U form, the curved portion being an arc of

Statement of the case.

a circle. This yoke had a pair of jaws and a clamp-wedge for securing the frame to the side of a tub. To the yoke frame a hinged frame E was attached, which, when in position, stood at right angles with the yoke, as shown in the engraving. At the middle point of the cross-bar which united the two sides of the hinged frame there was set a "hitching-pin," F, around which the clothes to be wrung were partially wound and held fast by the left hand of the washerwoman, while with her right hand she turned the rotary clamp in Figure 2, which formed a part of the machine, and which gave to the clothes the twist which expelled the water.

The rotary clamp shown at Figure 2 must be supposed to be set in the yoke B of Figure 1. It had a ring, H, with

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I and J were

flanged edges to hold the clamp in the yoke lever jaws which jammed against the portion of the clothes inside the ring, and K was a gag for locking the levers. The outer edge of the ring, II, was furnished at intervals with. notches, with which the pawl, P (Figure 1), could be made to engage, so that the rotary clamp, when the clothes were twisted, could be prevented from turning backwards, and the washerwoman would be able, if she wished to do so, to gripe with both hands around the hitching-pin, F, the portion of the clothes "rendered."

Statement of the case.

With the exception of the model in the Patent Office, there was no evidence that a machine of the kind had ever been constructed. It was too complicated to be practicable.

Such being the machine, the Washing Machine Company, complainant in this case (or Sylvanus Walker, rather, from whom the complainants. got it), bought the patent of Sergeant, and obtained the reissue on which this bill was founded.

The apparent idea in getting the reissue was that the apparatus shown at Figure 2 was a wringing mechanism, and was the equivalent of a pair of squeezing rollers; that the yoke-frame (Figure 1) was an apparatus separable from the clamp (Figure 2), and performed the office of supporting such wringing mechanism; and furthermore, that such supporting mechanism was peculiar in the fact that it had a clamping jaw attached to it which made it capable of being temporarily fastened to a tub. The complainant proposed, therefore, to divide the machine and to claim the yoke-frame and its device for being clamped to a tub, as a separate structure, without regard to whether the wringing mechanism used with such "supporting and connecting apparatus' were rollers or a twister.

The

The cut, Figure 3, on the page opposite, represents the structure claimed in the reissue under consideration. specification and claims in this reissue were thus:

"SPECIFICATION.

"The first part of this invention consists of a portable machine, which may be temporarily attached to one side of a common wash-tub, or readily disconnected therefrom, whenever desired, and is especially adapted to wringing clothes.

"The second, part of this invention consists in a portable frame, and employed for supporting the wringing mechanism of the machine upon one side of a common wash-tub, by means of a clamping device, which is made to gripe one side of a washtub, for the purpose of attaching and sustaining temporarily the entire wringing mechanism of the machine upon one side of a common wash-tub, in a firm and expeditious manner, regardless of the diameter of the tub, which greatly accelerates

Statement of the case.

the operations of washing, rinsing, and wringing of clothes, as will be hereinafter more fully set forth and described.

"In the drawings annexed, A represents a common wash-tub. B is a yoke whose inner margin is of U form, the sides of which extend upwards, forming uprights S S. From the lower end of yoke B extend two jaws, C C1, the latter of which contains,

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within a dovetail groove, a wedge or key, D, whose exposed side is made slightly concave, as shown in Figure 2. The office of the above-described jaws and wedge is to hold the frame, composed of the yoke B with uprights S S1 for supporting the wringing mechanism of the machine, in position for use, on one side of a common wash-tub, in a permanent manner, temporarily, regardless of the diameter of the tub or the thickness of its rim, in reference to which service they are termed collectively the 'vise.'

"This arrangement affords great facility for successively washing, rinsing, and wringing out the clothes from several waters in as many tubs, the wringer being readily changed from tub to tub.

"Omitting to describe the general features of the wringing

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