Opinion of the Court.

249 U. S.

state commerce. If they did, it is obvious that the state tariff was not applicable to them.

The following statement, taken from the record, shows the admitted facts as to the course of business:

"When the rough material reached the mills, it was manufactured into finished staves, headings and hoops, and in this condition shipped to whoever purchased them. The purchaser uses them in making barrels, casks, etc. The wastings in the finishing of said articles from the rough material were either disposed of for firewood, or destroyed. When the rough material left the woods, a bill of lading was issued from the woods to the mill. When the rough material reached the mill, it was finished into some or all of the articles described, when it was stacked in the yards or placed in kilns to dry. The process of manufacturing and drying occupied several months, or on an average this process would be gone through with, the finished products sold and shipped to the purchaser, in about five months from the date the rough material was received at the mill. The claimants classified the different parts after they came from the mill completely finished, and made sales from such stock. The markets for the manufactured articles were almost altogether in other states than Arkansas, or in foreign countries, and about ninety-five per cent. of the sale of finished articles, that is, of the total outbound shipments, were made for delivery at points outside the State of Arkansas, the remaining five per cent. being sold and delivered, or shipped to points within the State of Arkansas. At the time the rough material was shipped to the mills, the mills did not know to whom they would sell the finished product, or to what points it would be shipped, but did know that there was little market for the finished articles in the State of Arkansas, and expected that they would sell ninety-five per cent. of said finished articles and ship them to points outside the State of Arkansas.

"It was the intention of all the claimants herein, at the time they shipped the rough material into the milling points, to mill said rough material with the object of selling the said finished product and shipping it out as soon as practicable, and all of them knew and intended at the time they brought the rough material into the mill, on account of previous course of dealings in the business, that ninety-five per cent. of the finished product would be by them shipped to points outside the State of Arkansas.

"The claimants paid the usual property tax to the State of Arkansas on their stock of materials on hand at the milling point, whether said stock was in the rough or finished, the amount of the tax being arrived at according to the methods in use in the State of Arkansas by the use of an average basis."

Upon the facts as stated, it is our opinion that the district court erred in treating the movement of the rough lumber from the woods to the milling point as interstate commerce. It is not merely that there was no continuous movement from the forest to the points without the State, but that when the rough material left the woods it was not intended that it should be transported out of the State, or elsewhere beyond the mill, until it had been subjected to a manufacturing process that materially changed its character, utility, and value. The raw material came to rest at the mill, and after the product was manufactured it remained stored there for an indefinite periodmanufacture and storage occupying five months on the average for the purpose of finding a market. Where it would eventually be sold no one knew. And the fact that previous experience indicated that 95 per cent. of it must be marketed outside of the State, so that this entered into the purpose of the parties when shipping the rough material to the mill, did not alter the character of the latter movement. The question is too well settled by

previous decisions to require discussion. Coe v. Errol, 116 U. S. 517, 525; Bacon v. Illinois, 227 U. S. 504, 515516; McCluskey v. Marysville & Northern Ry. Co., 243 U. S. 36.

The distinction between these cases and those cited to sustain the decision of the district court (Swift & Co. v. United States, 196 U. S. 375, 398; Ohio R. R. Commission v. Worthington, 225 U. S. 101; Texas & New Orleans R. R. Co. v. Sabine Tram Co., 227 U. S. 111; Louisiana R. R. Commission v. Texas & Pacific Ry. Co., 229 U. S. 336) is so evident that particular analysis may be dispensed with.

The exceptions sustained by the district court to the claims of the Arkadelphia Milling Co. and Hasty & Sons having been found to be untenable, it results that these claims should be allowed as against the railway companies and their sureties, so far as they arose before the final decrees, and as against the railway companies only, so far as they arose after the final decrees.

Nos. 92 and 93, decree reversed; Nos. 94 and 95, decree modified and affirmed; and the cause remanded for further proceedings in conformity with this opinion.

MIDDLETON v. TEXAS POWER & LIGHT COMPANY.

ERROR TO THE COURT OF CIVIL APPEALS, THIRD SUPREME JUDICIAL DISTRICT, OF THE STATE OF TEXAS.

No. 102. Submitted December 18, 1918.-Decided March 3, 1919.

There is a strong presumption that discriminations in state legislation are based on adequate grounds, and the mere fact that a law regulating certain classes might properly have included others does not condemn it under the equal protection clause. P. 157.

The Texas Workmen's Compensation Act, regulating the rights and

liabilities of employers and employees respecting disabling and fatal injuries in the employment, is expressly inapplicable to domestic servants, farm laborers, common carrier railway employees, laborers in cotton gins and employees of employers employing not more than five. Held, that there are adequate grounds for each of these exceptions. Id.

The discrimination resulting between employees engaged in the same kind of work, where one employer exercises his option to come under the act and another does not, is likewise consistent with the equal protection clause. P. 159.

Construed as binding all employees who remain in the employment after notice that their employer has subscribed to compensation insurance under it, the act is not open to the objection of being optional to the employer while compulsory upon his employees when he accepts it, since the latter, by thus remaining, exercise their option also. P. 161.

As the status of employer and employee is voluntary, and in view of their different relations to the common undertaking, it is clearly within legislative discretion, and not a denial of equal protection, to leave the initiative to the former in adopting the new terms of employment, with the option to the latter of accepting them, too, after notice, or withdrawing from the service. Id.

A plan imposing upon the employer responsibility for making compensation for disabling or fatal injuries, irrespective of the question of fault, and requiring the employee to assume all risk of damages over and above the statutory schedule, when established as a reasonable substitute for the legal measure of duty and responsibility previously existing, may be made compulsory upon employees as well as employers, without depriving either of liberty in violation of the due process clause. P. 163.

108 Texas, 96, affirmed.

THE case is stated in the opinion.

Mr. Chas. B. Braun for plaintiff in error.

Mr. Harry Preston Lawther and Mr. Alexander Pope for defendant in error.

MR. JUSTICE PITNEY delivered the opinion of the court.

Alleging that in the month of December, 1913, he was in the employ of the Texas Power and Light Company in the

State of Texas, and while so employed received serious personal injuries through the bursting of a steam pipe due to the negligence of his employer and its agents, Middleton sued the company in a district court of that State to recover his damages. The defendant interposed an answer in the nature of a plea in abatement setting up that at the time of the accident and at the commencement of the action defendant was the holder of a policy of liability and compensation insurance, issued in its favor by a company lawfully transacting such business in the State, conditioned to pay the compensation provided by the Texas Workmen's Compensation Act, which was approved April 16, 1913, and took effect on the first day of September in that year (c. 179, Acts of 33d Legislature), of which fact the plaintiff had proper and timely notice as provided by the act; and that no claim for the compensation provided in the act with respect to the alleged injury had been made by plaintiff, but on the contrary he had refused to receive such compensation; with other matters sufficient to bring defendant within the protection of the act. Plaintiff took a special exception in the nature of a demurrer, upon the ground (among others) that the act was in conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The exception was overruled, the plea in abatement sustained, and the action dismissed. On appeal to the court of civil appeals it was at first held that the judgment must be reversed (178 S. W. Rep. 956); but upon an application for a rehearing the constitutional questions were certified to the supreme court of the State. That court sustained the constitutionality of the law (108 Texas, 96); and in obedience to its opinion the court of civil appeals set aside its former judgment and affirmed the judgment of the district court. Thereupon the present writ of error was sued out under § 237, Judicial Code, as amended by Act of September 6, 1916, c. 448, 39 Stat. 726.