90 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



themselves as to what the proposed laws of this State are. If it is 

 found that there is a discrepancy of this character, it should be righted. 



However, I must say that in fairness to the judge and the jury, if 

 you want to have laws enforced, they must be so clearly and definitely 

 stated that it is beyond any dispute as to just what is intended by the 

 law and that public sentiment can recognize when anybody 1ms trans- 

 gressed the law, in fact, whether intentionally or ignorantly; so that 

 there could be no doubt about it. If you try to get your law through as 

 such and get a working machine less perfect than that, you will find that 

 it will fail to do its work properly. You cannot put a man in jail, neither 

 can you fine him in the Circuit Court, except you can get a jur^^ to 

 say that he is guilt3^ They have tried to enforce, for instance, in the 

 State of Illinois, a law that no saloons shall be open on Sunday. In 

 Chicago, the sentiment of the majority has not been in favor of that. 

 Juries have been called repeatedly to convict men for violating that 

 law, and the prosecution could get no verdict from the juries. So the 

 law has been a dead letter. We want laws that are alive; that will 

 force the guilty into line, if it is possible to get them enacted. The 

 judge of our Circuit Court, Hon. G. W. Bridgman, believes that the 

 law ought to provide that costs of court and perhaps a heavier fine 

 may be taxed against a defendant found guilty who had appealed to a 

 Circuit Court from a judgment of a justice of the peace, and that, 

 so long as the word "knowingly" remains in the law, it will cause 

 difficulty in its enforcement. 



I am inclined to think that this law would be helped if the words 

 "If the package is marked with the words 'not faced' should be added 

 at the close of section five. 



If that provision were in the law and a jury should find that a man 

 had marked a package ^'tiot faced" when the contents Avere not of the 

 prescribed grade, there could then be no doubt in their minds that 

 he was guilt}'^ of fraud and deception, and all packages of Michigan 

 grown fruit with that mark upon them would by that very mark 

 call the attention of the purchasing public to the fact that the laws 

 of Michigan practically^ guaranteed that they were honestly packed. 



The constitutionality of this law probably will not and cannot be 

 determined merely by an examination of the law books, and not until 

 the courts can know from testimony, how the law works out in the 

 orchard and the packing sheds, and can judge whether the scope is 

 broader than the title, and whether it improperly meddles with honest 

 business. As an illustration of a case that might arise, I happen to be 

 interested in the growing of peaches, which I ship to a special market 

 packing them generally by preference of the consumers in what is known 

 as six basket crates. With these small baskets made in the shape 

 that they are, Ave do not know down in our locality how it is. possible 

 in a practical way to pack these baskets, so that there will not of neces- 

 sity be peaches in the bottom that are smaller than those that are placed 

 above them. Nobody complains about them, but you are certainly get- 

 ting them larger on top, than they are below. The form of the package 

 is such that no one could expect to have the peaches the same size all 

 the way through. Technically it might be charged that we are violating 



