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Show ONCE OVER- Supreme Court Bans Bell Ringing '. By H. I. Phillips NOW we know why the United States supreme court has been acting so ornery about things lately. It used to be steady-going and dependable. de-pendable. But for some years it has been irascible, disputative and unreliable. un-reliable. The cause seems clear. It has been bothered by brush salesmen. sales-men. This was revealed the other day in a sharp decision declaring, to all effects, that no salesman has any right to ring a doorbell without permission of the housewife. And written permission, too. The court held constitutional the right of any community to pass such a law. It showed less disagreement than In any case in years. (There were a couple of dissents, but these were from justices who never answer a doorbell anyhow, and just yell down "Scram.") T. Aristotle Winch, of Winch, Winch, Smathers, Winch and Winch, this department's favorite attorney (who worked his way through college col-lege selling magazine subscriptions) declares the court off base, however. how-ever. He cites Hubble versus Flat-foot Flat-foot (506. Mass. 84) which held that a doorbell is a doorbell and is put there to be rung. "Indeed," reads this decision, "if there is a doorbell on a house and it does not work, a salesman may even be within his rights in heaving a rock through an upper window." t Mr. Winch also cited Bottle- j fly versus Mrs. Potts (86. Conn. 325). In this case Mrs. Potts was forced to chop the foot off 1 a book salesman after he had (tuck it In the doorway. Bottle- fly sued for a new foot. The court suspended Mrs. Potts' hatchet license saying, "Even if she had been summoned downstairs down-stairs for the fourth time that morning by peddlars, the salesman sales-man was within his rights in trying to advance literature. The practice of inserting the foot in a doorway has been long allowable under common law. The argument that the defendant defend-ant had a right to hack his foot off because she suspected that, failing in his effort to sell her a set of books, he would try to put over a vacuum cleaner, is hereby dismissed." Then there is the ruling In the case of Haddock versus Crumps (46. Illinois. 76). Here Haddock, a young man, called to sell Hector Crumps subscriptions to seven periodicals, saying he was working his way through college. Crumps threw him off the porch, holding that Haddock was at least 37 years of age and that this was his sixteenth six-teenth season of working his way through college. The court held that for every doorbell ringer 37 years of age seeking an education there are hundreds much younger, and their right to operate must be protected. The most novel ruling, however, came in Stuffle versus Wimpus (33. R.I. 8197). A young man rang the bell and proposed that the tenant ten-ant go to college while he moved in, subscribed to all the magazines and did the housework. Wimpus, the defendant, de-fendant, hit him with a chair. |