HKB
commodities identified by trade mark will not be sold by the vendee or subsequent vendees except at prices stipulated by the original vendor does not violate the due process clause.[297]
Statutes Preventing Fraud in Sale of Goods.--Laws and ordinances tending to prevent frauds and requiring honest weights and measures in the sale of articles of general consumption have long been considered lawful exertions of the police power.[298] Thus, a prohibition on the issuance by other than an authorized weigher of any weight certificate for grain weighed at any warehouse or elevator where State weighers are stationed, or to charge for such weighing, is not unconstitutional.[299] Nor is a municipal ordinance requiring that commodities sold in load lots by weight be weighed by a public weigh-master within the city invalid as applied to one delivering coal from State-tested scales at a mine outside the city.[300] A statute requiring merchants to record sales in bulk not made in the regular course of business is also within the police power.[301]
Similarly, the power of a State to prescribe standard containers to protect buyers from deception as well as to facilitate trading and to preserve the condition of the merchandise is not open to question. Accordingly, an administrative order issued pursuant to an authorizing statute and prescribing the dimensions, form, and capacity of containers for strawberries and raspberries is not arbitrary inasmuch as the form and dimensions bore a reasonable relation to the protection of the buyers and the preservation in transit of the fruit.[302] Similarly, an ordinance fixing standard sizes of bread loaves and prohibiting the sale of other sizes is not unconstitutional.[303] However, by a case decided in 1924, a "tolerance" of only two ounces in excess of the minimum weight of a loaf of bread is unreasonable when it is impossible to manufacture good bread without frequently exceeding the prescribed tolerance and is consequently unconstitutional;[304] but by one decided ten years later, regulations issued in furtherance of a statutory authorization which impose a rate of tolerance not to exceed three ounces to a pound of bread and requiring that the bread maintain the statutory minimum weight for not less than 12 hours after cooling are constitutional.[305] Likewise a law requiring that lard not sold in bulk should be put upon in containers holding one, three, or five pounds weight, or some whole multiple of these numbers, does not deprive sellers of their property without the process of law.[306]
The right of a manufacturer to maintain secrecy as to his compounds and processes must be held subject to the right of the State, in the exercise of the police power and in the promotion of fair dealing, to require that the nature of the product be fairly set forth.[307] Nor does a statute providing that the purchaser of harvesting or threshing machinery for his own use shall have a reasonable time after delivery for inspecting and testing it, and permitting recission of the contract if the machinery does not prove reasonably adequate, and further declaring any agreement contrary to its provisions to be against public policy and void, does not violate the due process clause.[308]