U.S. Supreme Court A. MAGNANO CO. v. HAMILTON, 292 U.S. 40 (1934)

[Page 292 U.S. 40, 47]

are to be given their ordinary meaning unless the context shows that they are differently used. Child Labor Tax Case, supra, 259 U.S. 36, 42 S.Ct. 449, 21 A.L.R. 1432. If the tax imposed had been 5 cents instead of 15 cents per pound, no one, probably, would have thought of challenging its constitutionality or of suggesting that under the guise of imposing a tax another and different power had in fact been exercised. If a contrary conclusion were reached in the present case, it could rest upon nothing more than the single premise that the amount of the tax is so excessive that it will bring about the destruction of appellant's business, a premise which, standing alone, this court heretofore has uniformly rejected as furnishing no juridical ground for striking down a taxing act. As we have already seen, it was definitely rejected in the Veazie Bank Case, where it was urged that the tax was 'so excessive as to indicate a purpose on the part of Congress to destroy the franchise of the bank'; in the McCray Case, where it was said that the discretion of Congress could not be controlled or limited by the courts because the latter might deem the incidence of the tax oppressive or even destructive; in the Alaska Fish Case, from which we have just quoted; and in the Child Labor Tax Case, where it was held that the intent of Congress must be derived from the language of the act, and that a prohibition instead of a tax was intended might not be inferred solely from its heavy burden.

From the beginning of our government, the courts have sustained taxes although imposed with the collateral intent of effecting ulterior ends which, considered apart, were beyond the constitutional power of the lawmakers to realize by legislation directly addressed to their accomplishment. Those decisions, as the foregoing discussion discloses, rule the present case.

Decree affirmed. Footnotes

Footnote 1 See Brushaber v. Union Pacific R.R., 240 U.S. 1, 24, 25 S., 36 S.Ct. 236; Nichols v. Coolidge, 274 U.S. 531, 542, 543 S., 47 S.Ct. 710, 52 A.L.R. 1081; Heiner v. Donnan, , 325- 328, 52 S.Ct. 358. Compare Schlesinger v. Wisconsin, 270 U.S. 230, 239, 240 S., 46 S.Ct. 260.