Law: Door Slammed

Figuratively seeking justice at the august bar of the U. S. Supreme Court fortnight ago was The Fuller Brushman. The nation’s most familiar house-to-house solicitor was represented in the person of John L. Bunger, who wanted the Supreme Court to reverse his conviction for a misdemeanor in Green River, Wyo. (pop. 2,589) three years ago. Green River has an ordinance which makes business solicitation of a private residence without an invitation a nuisance. Ruling there was no substantial Federal question involved, the high court refused to review a decision of Wyoming’s Supreme Court, thus in effect sanctioned the ordinance.

Having digested the import of the U. S. Supreme Court’s slamming the door in The Fuller Brushman’s face, last week big house-to-house sellers like Real Silk Hosiery, Jewel Tea, Singer Sewing Machine, were nursing real headaches at the prospect of continuing encounters with nuisance laws. At least 250 other U. S. communities have already patterned ordinances after Green River’s.

Most attempts to regulate door-to-door solicitation have been made in small communities. Strictest spots are in Wyoming, Illinois and southern California. Types of laws regulating solicitation vary from requiring nominal 25¢ licensing fees to mandatory finger-printing and posting of large cash bonds. Until Mayor William Evers signed Green River’s Ordinance No. 175 in November 1931, most such laws had been invalidated on grounds that they operated in restraint of interstate trade and were an unreasonable exercise of police power.

When Brushman Bunger was first arrested in Green River, Fuller Brush Co. changed their solicitor’s manner of approach. Householders were asked to sign a card inviting The Fuller Brushman to call again any time he was in town, which in fact meant the next day. Brushman Bunger, sent to Green River again, was rearrested. The District Court in Sweetwater County held Fuller’s new oblique approach to be a sham. So did Wyoming’s Supreme Court.

So serious was the decision to a number of direct sellers that they formed an informal “House-to-House Sellers’ Institute,” hired famed Constitutional Lawyer John William Davis to carry Brushman Bunger’s appeal to the U. S. Supreme Court. His arguments that the Green River ordinance was “repugnant” to the due process and interstate commerce clauses of the Constitution went unheeded.