Ex parte Haskell

The city of Chico is a municipal corporation of the fifth class, having power as such to license, for purposes of regulation and revenue, all and every kind of business transacted or carried on in such city, and to fix rates of license tax upon the same, and provide for their collection. It has an ordinance which, among other provisions thereof relating to the revenue, has the following:

Haskell, a traveling salesman for a shirt house in Oakland, was arrested, and is held by the marshal of Chico, upon a warrant issued from the recorder’s court of said city, upon a complaint which charges Haskell with a misdemeanor in vending within said city wearing apparel, to wit, shirts by sample, without a license therefor, in violation of the provision of said ordinance above quoted.

The petitioner asks that Haskell be discharged on habeas corpus, upon the ground that the ordinance is void and of no effect for various alleged reasons, and so furnishes no competent authority for his detention.

It is urged, in effect, that the particular provision in question is unreasonable and oppressive, and that it is unequal and unlawfully discriminating. But we are unable to regard it as open to either…