SPHERE OF STATE GOVERNMENT 67 



cision partly upon the point that as the state conditioned the 

 acquiring of property in game upon the understanding that 

 it should not be exported from the state, it could never be- 

 come an article of commerce in the real sense of the word. 47 

 Logically then if the state wherein the game was killed had 

 not attached such a qualification, the game did become an 

 article of commerce and a state could not prohibit its impor- 

 tation. Congress alone could enact such a prohibition, and 

 had done so by the Lacy Act of ipoo. 48 The matter was 

 therefore settled. 



This act of Congress declared that the dead bodies of 

 game animals shipped into a state should upon their arrival 

 within its borders be subjected to the operation of its laws 

 in the same manner as though the animals had been killed 

 in the state. It was similar to the act 49 placing liquor ship- 

 ments under the state's police power which was upheld in 

 In re Rahrer. 50 



The United States Supreme Court has held valid a sever- 

 ance tax placed by the legislature of Louisiana in 1920, 

 upon all hides, skins, and furs of animals killed within the 

 state, denying that it placed a burden on interstate com- 

 merce. 51 The court stressed the point that the tax was levied 

 on all skins taken in the state, no distinction being made 

 between those manufactured in the state and those shipped 

 out. The fact that the greater portion happened to be 

 shipped in interstate commerce did not affect the result. 



47 The Illinois Supreme Court used similar reasoning when this same 

 point was raised at an earlier date in the Magner Case, see 97 111. 320 

 (1881) holding that game illegally taken in Kansas and exported from 

 that state never became an article of commerce in the real sense of the 

 word, and therefore Illinois might prohibit its importation. 



48 3 1 Stat. L. 1039. 

 26 Stat. L. 313. 



50 140 U. S. 545, ii S. Ct. 865 (1891). 



s *Lacoste v. Dept. of Conservation, 263 U. S. 545 (1920). 



