Until 1907 Texas had a very extensive system of license taxes. There was considerable increase of these taxes in 1879 over the rates prevailing in 1876, and in 1881 when a reduction of taxation became possible, reduction was made in the ad valorem rather than in the license taxes.1 General revisions of the rates were made in 1881, 1882, 1889 and 1897. As some one hundred and twenty-five different items were concerned, it is impossible to follow the changes in each one.

The famous Bell Punch Law enacted in 1879 to apply to liquor dealers was a failure and a scandal and was repealed in 1881.2 Replacing it were fixed license charges of $300 and $200, according as liquor was sold in quantities of less than one quart, more than five gallons, and one quart and less than five gallons, and a charge of $50 for the sale of malt liquor only.3 In 1897 the privilege of selling liquor upon prescription in local option territory was made taxable at $200.4 In 1907 the rates for dealers of liquor in any quantity, including those selling upon prescription, were raised to $375 and the rate for malt dealers exclusively was increased to $62.50.5

The tax of $200 on commercial travelers, known as "the Drummers' Tax," and imposed in 1879, was reduced to $50 in 1881 and $35 in 1882, and was severed of any connection with the occupation tax on merchants. In 1888 it was held by the Supreme Court of the United States to be an unconstitutional interference with interstate commerce, in so far as it applied to drummers representing foreign houses or houses doing business in other states.1 It was not re-enacted so as to apply only to drummers of domestic houses doing a state business.

1 Message of Governor Roberts, January 13, 1881. For criticism see Galveston News, January 14, 1881.

2 Laws of 1881, p. 21. Galveston News, January 14, 1881, speaking editorially of this law said the urgent thing was "to get rid of the enormous scandal of its corpse putrefying in the midst of the state's statutes and administrative functions and polluting far and wide the moral atmosphere." See also the message of Governor Roberts, January 11, 1881.

3 Laws of 1893, p. 177. Francois Giozza v. Patrick Tiernan, 148 U. S., 657 (1893).

4 Laws of 1897, Reg. Sess., p. 223.

5 Laws of 1907, p. 258. Rev. Civil Stats., 1911, art. 7427.

The tendency of legislation dealing with the license taxes has been to reduce the taxes on the so-called useful occupations and to increase those on pursuits which smack of quackery and charlatanry or which are regarded as socially harmful. The taxes on merchants were decreased in 1881 and 1882, and until 1889 there were seven classes of merchants on the basis of the amounts of their purchases of merchandise. In 1889 four classes were added and the maximum tax was made $300 instead of $125. There remained eleven classes with rates varying from $3 to $300 until the taxes were repealed in 1907. The other occupations relieved in 1907 of a license tax were bankers and brokers; cotton, wool, and hide buyers; dealers in cotton seed products; dentists in the county of their residence; grain elevators; hacks and other vehicles for hire; local insurance agents; land agents; steam laundries; lawyers; livery and feed stables; photograph galleries : toll bridges; and wagon yards.2 The receipts from the taxes on the occupations thereafter exempt amounted in 1907 to $249,175. The tax on resident physicians and surgeons was repealed in 1899. The taxes which remain may be divided into five general classes:

(1) Those on occupations supplying amusements or pleasure. Under these fall nine and ten pin alleys, baseball parks, circuses,3 concerts, exhibitions of acrobats, menageries, wax works, sleight-of-hand performances, exhibitions given by medicine, electric belt and such like vendors; flying jennies, phonograph, graphophone. and motion picture shows; knife, cane, doll and other such racks; race tracks, shooting galleries, skating rinks, and theaters. The arguments in support of the taxation of these occupations are that those engaged in them have tax ability which cannot be reached by the property tax, and that in the case of several they are occupations which need either discouragement or slight repression. Exhibitions by associations for the promotion of art, science, and charity, concerts given for charitable or literary purposes, and museums composed entirely of the products of Texas are exempt from the payment of occupation taxes.

1 Ex-parte Asher, 23 Texas Crim. App., 662 (1887). Asher v. Texas, 128 U. S., 129 (1888).

2 Laws of 1907, p. 57. Rev. Civil Stats., art. 7355. 3Laws of 1911, p. 142.

(2) Those on peripatetic occupations. Among these are peddlers; canvassers; traveling vendors of patent medicines; traveling medical specialists, surgeons, oculists, and other specialists; and itinerant merchants selling bankrupt stocks. Peddlers of literature, poultry, vegetables, fruits or other country produce exclusively are exempt, as are also salesmen for merchants engaged in the wholesale drug business. The act of 1897 exempted from the peddlers' tax the blind, deaf and dumb, wounded persons, those who had lost a hand or a foot, and ex-Confederate and ex-Federal soldiers; but these exemptions were held to be in violation of the "equal and uniform" provision of the constitution and therefore invalid.1

The explanation for these taxes is that the occupations are not easily reached by the property tax' and that they compete with the established local business houses and the settled professional men.

1 Ex-parte Jones, 38 Texas Crim. Rep., 482 (1897). That part of the act of 1897 taxing peddlers of clocks, cooking stoves, washing machines, churns, wagons and other vehicles $350 and exempting from this special tax merchants who had paid the merchants' occupation tax of less amount was declared unconstitutional; Ex-parte Overstreet, 39 Texas Crim. Rep., 474 (1898). The occupation tax act was amended in 1899 to conform to these decisions. Traveling vendors of tinware and earthenware were dropped from the exempt list by this amendatory act; Laws of 1899, p. 201. A tax which was first levied by the occupation tax law of 1881 and which applied to solicitors of orders for photographs, enlarged crayon pictures and the like, was declared an unconstitutional interferences with interstate commerce when applied to. solicitors of a foreign corporation; Ex-parte Holman, 36 Texas Crim. Rep., 255 (1896). It was also held in French v. State, 42 Texas Crim. Rep., 222 (1900), that a peddler of organs for an organ company of another state was not liable for a state occupation tax when he sold organs in the original package as it were; but this decision was overruled in Saulsburry v. State, 43 Tex. Crim. Rep., 90 (1901), the court following Emert v. Missouri, 156 U. S., 296 (1894).