Trading Stamps

The current name for a method of conducting some kinds of retail business which consists of an agreement between a number of merchants and a corporation that the latter shall print the names of the former in its subscribers’ dicchase of the' corporation a number of socalled trading stamps, to be given to purchasers with their purchases, and by them preserved and pasted in the books aforesaid until a certain number have been secured, when they shall be presented to the corporation in exchange for the choice of certain articles kept in stock by the corporation. Lansburgh v. D. of Col., 11 App. D. C. 512. Under Act of Congress Feb. 17, 1873, which forbids the sale of real estate or any article of merchandise or taking of payment with a promise to give any article or thing, in consideration of the purchase by any person of any other article or thing, etc., it was held that the business was nothing more nor less than a gaming device; id. But later cases hold otherwise. The trading stamp business, when conducted honestly, is not contrary to public policy; S. & H. Co. v. Temple, 137 Fed. 992; and statutes which attempt to prohibit such business or which levy a license or excise tax on it as a separate business are uniformly held unconstitutional; State v. Dalton, 22 R. I. 77, 46 Atl. 234, 48 L. R. A. 775, 84 Am. St. Rep. 818; People v. Gillson, 109 N. Y. 389, 17 N. E. 343, 4 Am. St. Rep. 465; Ex parte Mc Kenna, 126 Cal. 429, 58 Pac. 916; Young v. Com., 101 Va. 853, 45 S. E. 327; Montgomery v. Kelly, 142 Ala. 552, 38 South. 67, 70 L. R. A. 209; Ex parte Drexel, 147 Cal. 763, 82 Pac. 429, 2 L. R. A. (N. S.) 588, 3 Ann. Cas. 878; O’Keeffe v. Somerville, 190 Mass. 110, 76 N. E. 457, 112 Am. St. Rep. 316, 5 Ann. Cas. 684; and so of a municipal ordinance forbidding it; Denver v. Frueauff, 39 Colo. 20, 88 Pac. 389, 7 L. R. A. (N. S.) 1131, 12 Ann. Cas. 521; City Council of Montgomery v. Kelly, 142 Ala. 552, 38 South. 67, 70 L. R. A. 209, 110 Am. St. Rep. 43; and such business is not a gift enterprise or a lottery; Winston v. Beeson, 135 N. C. 271, 47 S. E. 457, 65 L. R. A. 167; State v. Dodge, 76 Yt. 197, 56 Atl. 983, 1 Ann. Cas. 47; an injunction will be granted against a competing trading stamp company whose agents exchange its stamps for partly filled books containing plaintiff’s stamps which are non transferable; Sperry & Hutchinson Co. v. Weber & Co., 161 Fed. 219. An act forbidding the issue and distribution of trading stamps to be redeemed by any person other than the merchant who sells the goods with which such stamps are given is not a lawful exercise of the police power and is unconstitutional as being an unlawful deprivation of liberty and property; People v. Dycker, 72 App. Div. 308, 76 N. Y. Supp. 111. TRADITI0 BREVIS MANUS (Lat.). In Civil Law. The delivery of a thing by the mere consent of the parties. Putting the thing so that the transferee could take it with hindrance. Voet Com. 4. 1. 34. feror places the article in the hands of the transferee. Mackeld. Rom. L. $ 284. TRADITION (Dat. tram, over, do y dare, to give). The act by which a thing is delivered by one or more persons to one or more others. The transfer of ownership by means of placing the transferee in legal possession of the object, with the intention of vesting the ownership in him. The delivery of possession by the proprietor with an intention to transfer the property to the receiver. Two things are, therefore, requisite in order to transmit property in this way: the intention or consent of the former owner to transfer it, and the actual delivery in pursuance of that intention. Tradition is either real or symbolical. Real tradition takes place where the ipsa corpora of movables are put into the hands of the receiver. Symbolical tradition is used where the thing is incapable of real delivery, as, in immovable subjects, such as lands and houses, or such as consist in jure (things incorporeal), as, things of fishing, and the like. The property of certain movables, though they are capable of real delivery, may be transferred by symbol. See Delivery; Symbolical Delivery.