Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 9.djvu/36

 KENNEDY V. HARTBANPT. 21 �have a special meaning according to the common under standing and usage of the trade to which the article appertains, presumptively con- gress used the term in such restrictive sense. But you must be sat- isfied from the evidence in the cause that there was such a general restrictive meaning given to these words in the trade that there could be no doubt that they ineluded only hoop iron or band iron ; that not only was this term used generically to describe hoop iron, but that it excluded any other form of hoop iron than such as it is olaimed here this term commercially is to be restricted to the description of ; that evidence is that the term hoop iron ordinarily is used to describe pieces of hoop iron which are put up in bundles and lengths just as they corne out of the rolls, and -which contain 56 pounds, and that generically such an article is described as hoop iron in a commercial sense. �But, gentlemen, in order to fix this meaning to such a term, and to change the popular meaning of the term employed in the act of con- gress, you must be satisfied that such is the restricted sense given to the -Word by the universal understanding of the trade in which the term is employed ; and, besides that, that it is exelusively descriptive of the article to which the witnesses here have said it is generically applied. Now, is there evidence upon which you can corne to the conclusion that this word is used in that restrictive sense in this 'act of congress ? As I have already remarked, it must be shown by the evidence beyond doubt that such is the general signification of the term as given to it by the use in the trade. Now, have you such evi- dence here? If I recollect the testimony aright, there is a very serions difference among the witnesses. Some of them testify that hoop iron — very few of them before 1864 — was descriptive of a bundle of iron as I have already described, and others say that it was not. So that, unless you are clearly satisfied from all the evidence that hoop iron bad this restricted sense according to commercial usage, the commercial signification of it will not be so fixed as to authorize the presumption that this word was used in any other sense by the act of congress than according to the popular meaning. �But, gentlemen, the act of congress is a little broader than that. It seems clearly to contemplate something more than one kind of hoop iron. If it said hoop iron, and such was the restrictive sense, and such was satisfactorily established before you by the weight of testimony, it might possibly be proper for you to presume that con- gress used the term in that restrictive sense. But "all hoop iron" ��� �