NOTES OF RECENT CASES and maintain street railways in the city of New York in consideration of a gross sum or of the annual payment of a fixed amount or fixed per centage of earnings, there being no stipulation that such payments were to be regarded as in lieu of or as an equivalent or substitute for taxes. It is also held that the exemption of subsurface street railways from the operation of the special franchise tax does not make the statiite invalid as denying to the owners of surface strtet railways the equal protection of the law or as depriving them of their property without due process of law. N. Y. ex rel Street Ry. Co. v Tax Com'rs, 25 Sup. Ct. Rep. 705. ' CONSTITUTIONAL LAW. (Peonage.) U. S. C. C. for N. D. of Fla. — Coming as it does, soon after the case of United States v. Clyatt, 197 U. S. 207, 25 Supreme Court Reporter, 429, in which the Supreme Court dealt for the first time with the construction of the peonage statute, the language of District Judge Swayne, charging the grand jury (In re Peonage Charge, 138 Federal Re porter, 686), is not without interest. Peonage is defined in much the same language employed in the Supreme Court case mentioned, which was noted in this magazine at the time, and in addi tion, it is said that the i3th Amendment, prohib iting slavery, forbids involuntary servitude for the payment of debt within the jurisdiction of the national government, whether created by contract, by criminal individual force, by municipal ordi nance, state law, or otherwise. Rev. St. U. S. Sec. 5526, is also referred to and it is stated that if a person desiring to have a servant returned to him to work out a debt, causes such servant to be arrested on a 'warrant procured by the master and after incarceration the master procures the servant's release on his promise to return to his master's employment to continue to work out the debt, the master is guilty of peonage, provided the servant had been charged with the crime for the purpose of procur ing his arrest and incarceration and to enable the master to extort from the servant a promise to return and work out the debt. COPYRIGHT. (Subjects of Protection.) U. S. C. C. Dis. of N. J. — American Mutoscope & Biograph Co. v. Edison Mfg. Co., 137 Federal Re porter, 262 is authority for the proposition that a photograph which is not only a light-written picture of some object, but also an expression of an idea, or thought, or conception, of the one who takes it, is a writing, and a proper subject of copyright. Several analogous cases are cited, among them being Lithographic Co. v. Sarony,
in U. S. 53, 4 Sup. Ct. Reporter, 279; Falk v. Brett Lithographing Co., 48 Fed. 678; Same v. Donaldson, 57 Fed. 32 and Same v. Item Printing Co., 79 Fed. 321. A correct apprehension of the scope of the pres ent holding requires a slight explanation as to the facts. The photograph which it was alleged was infringed consisted of a strip of film 370 feet long bearing several hundreds of pictures which, when passed rapidly through an apparatus similar to a magic lantern, gave the observer the impression of motion. The scenes represented were the con ception of the artist who prepared the pictures, and were produced by a number of performers who had been carefully rehearsed in their parts. This obviously required such originality of conception on the part of the persons who designed the scenes and secured the negatives that the expres sion of their ideas in the form of a series of photo graphs in a sense told a story, so that the only physical representation of these ideas might very properly be considered a writing. EQUITY. (Injunction — Stock Exchange Quo tations.) U. S. S. C. — In Chicago Board of Trade v. Christie Grain and Stock Company, 25 Supreme Court Reporter, 637, the Board of Trade sought to enjoin the defendants from using and distributing quotations of prices on sales of grain and provisions for future delivery. It was alleged and proven that these quotations were collected by the plaintiff at its own expense and furnished to telegraph companies under contracts that they should not be furnished to bucket shops, or in fact, to any persons not previously approved by the Board of Trade. Defendants in some manner obtained possession of the quotations, although they had no contract with the telegraph com panies, and it was held that as the quotations could not be Obtained without a breach of the confidential terms on which they were communi cated by the Board of Trade to its customers, their use might be enjoined even though the quo tations related to "pretended buying and selling," within the meaning of Illinois Act, June 6, pro hibiting the keeping of places where such trans actions are permitted. The only other point in the case arises on de fendants' contention that the contracts with the telegraph companies by which the communica tion of quotations of prices was limited, effect a monopoly, or attempt at monopoly, forbidden by federal statutes. This seems to have given the court less trouble than the other point for it is briefly disposed of by the observation that as the Board of Trade might have refrained from com municating these prices to any one, its refusal to
