June 14, 2023 • 37 mins
Nix v. Hedden was the U.S. supreme court decision that made tomatoes a vegetable, at least for tariff purposes. This case involved a lot of dictionaries being read aloud.
Research:
- Baron, Dennis. “Look It Up in Your Funk & Wagnalls : How Courts Define the Words of the Law.” Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America, Volume 43, Issue 2, 2022, pp. 95-144 (Article). https://doi.org/10.1353/dic.2022.0015
- Dewey, Caitlin. “The obscure Supreme Court case that decided tomatoes are vegetables.” Washington Post. 10/18/2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/10/18/the-obscure-supreme-court-case-that-decided-tomatoes-are-vegetables/
- Hendrickson, Scott and Jason M. Roberts. “Short-Term Goals and Long-Term Effects: The Mongrel Tariff and the Creation of the Special Rule in the U.S. House.” Journal of Policy History. Vol. 28, No. 2. 2016. doi:10.1017/S0898030616000087
- Hollender v. Magone, 149 U.S. 586 (1893). https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/149/586/
- New York Times. “100TH YEAR MARKED BY PRODUCE HOUSE.” 2/22/1939. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1939/02/22/96020572.html?pageNumber=40
- Nix, John W. “1795-1895. One hundred years of American commerce ... history of American commerce by one hundred Americans, with a chronological table of the important events of American commerce and invention within the past one hundred years.” Chauncey Mitchell Depew, editor. New York, D.O. Haynes, 1895. https://archive.org/details/17951895onehundr02depeuoft/page/n377/
- ROBERTS, JASON M. “The Development of Special Orders and Special Rules in the U.S. House, 1881–1937.” Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol. 35, no. 3, 2010, pp. 307–36. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25750388. Accessed 31 May 2023.
- Schafer, Matthew. “The Curious Case of the Green Tomato and the Tax Collector.” Medium. 9/1/2020. https://matthewschafer.medium.com/the-curious-case-of-the-green-tomato-and-the-tax-collector-56ff0a72dc74
- Smith, Andrew F. "Tomato." Encyclopedia of Food and Culture, edited by Solomon H. Katz, vol. 3, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2003, pp. 402-407. Gale In Context: U.S. History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3403400575/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=6909ec78. Accessed 25 May 2023.
- Supreme Court of the United States. Nix v. Hedden, 149 U.S. 304 (1893). https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/149/304/
- "Tomato." Britannica Library, Encyclopædia Britannica, 29 Jul. 2018. libraries.state.ma.us/login?eburl=https%3A%2F%2Flibrary.eb.com&ebtarget=%2Flevels%2Freferencecenter%2Farticle%2Ftomato%2F72825&ebboatid=9265652. Accessed 25 May. 2023.
- United States Congress. “An act to reduce internal-revenue taxation, and for other purposes.” March 3, 1883.
- United States v. Petix. https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-petix-1
- “Virginia Truck Farms.” From the Portsmouth Star. Fruit Trade Journal and Produce Record. Volume 56. https://books.google.com/books?id=xtlKAQAAMAAJ
- "Yates v. United States." Oyez, www.oyez.org/cases/2014/13-7451. Accessed 25 May. 2023.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Recently, we were trying to brainstorm some ideas for the
show that were food related in some way. We talk
about food fairly often, but this was for like a
specific project. Yeah, and I briefly thought about doing a
history of the tomato because there's just so much stuff
there that really fascinates me. Like, for example, tomatoes are
(00:37):
such a key part of so much Italian cuisine, but
they are not even native to the same continent as Italy.
There's that whole thing where people in parts of the
world used to think tomatoes are poisonous, and they are
in the night shade family, which does include some really
toxic plants and people can have allergies and intolerances and
(00:58):
things like that. But also tomatoes are just acidic enough
to leach the lead out of dishes and utensils, so
in the era when people were eating off of lead
a lot, they really might have been helping to poison people.
We've also done histories of specific foods before. Some of
those episodes are ones that I researched and wrote, so
(01:19):
I know that can be done, but as I looked
at this, it just increasingly seemed maybe not workable for tomatoes.
You could do any one of those nodules of the
tomato story and it's its own story. It would be
its own thing. And yeah, and today we do have
one piece of it that it's this whole thing, it's
its own thing, which is Nicks versus Headen. That was
(01:42):
the US Supreme Court decision that made tomatoes a vegetable
at least for tariff purposes. I do love a weird
court case. And that also gave us the opportunity to
at least touch on some of those things that I
find so interesting about tomatoes in the.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
So, there are several different species of tomato. The one
that's cultivated and eaten most is Solanum, like a persicum,
but there are thousands of varieties of that one species
growing around the world. And although a lot of people
like to think of tomatoes as vegetables, and the cork
case we're talking about agreed. In botanical terms, you've probably
(02:23):
heard this before. They are a fruit. Specifically, they're a berry.
So berries are fleshy fruits that develop from the ovary
of a flower. Berries do not have pits, but they
can have seeds, and under this definition, bananas are also berries,
and so are eggplants and bell peppers.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Side note, despite their names, raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries are
not berries according to botanical definitions. They are all aggregate fruits,
meaning that they develop from lots of flower ovaries instead
of just one. So for blackberries and raspberries, that aggregated
parts are called druplets. For strawberries, the true fruit in
(03:04):
the strawberry is all those little pips on the exterior.
Those are fruits called achnes, and the rest of the
strawberry is a fleshy accessory receptacle that's holding all those akines.
Other akenes include dandelions. The little seeds at the end
of the dandelion fluff are fruit as well. This information
(03:26):
we are offering for informational purposes only, and not as
ammunition to go be pedantic at people when they call
strawberries berries or whatever. I just want to say, fleshy
accessory receptacle sounds like the title of a Kurt Vannaget
short story. Yeah, it doesn't sound like something you would
want to eat I mean I do. Maybe I want
(03:48):
to eat strawberries all the time. Oh.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Same. So tomatoes are native to the Andes Mountains in
South America, and there's evidence that people in this region
domesticated the tomato, but it's less clear whether they ate
as food. It can be really tricky to find archaeological
evidence to answer these kinds of questions, and the oral
histories and food ways of many of these peoples were
(04:10):
disrupted through European conquest and colonization. But at some point
tomato plants were introduced from the Andes Mountains to Mexico.
They were definitely being used as a food source there
by the time Spain started colonizing the region in fifteen nineteen.
The word tomato comes from the Nahuatal language, and the
(04:31):
Nahwuas developed a wide range of dishes incorporating this fruit.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah. Maybe at some time we'll have an unearthed discovery
about like residues on the inside of bits of pottery
to answer the question of.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
What so much lycopene?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yeah, well, we'll see maybe. But as the Spanish conquered
and colonized the surrounding areas, they introduced tomato plants as well.
Starting in the Caribbean. Spanish peace people returning to Europe
took tomatoes with them, carrying them first to Spain and
then to Italy. The first written record of a tomato
(05:08):
in Europe was in an Italian herbal in fifteen forty four.
It's likely that tomatoes made their way farther north into
North America, not from Mexico or the Caribbean, but from Spain,
again brought by Spanish colonists in the seventeenth century. And
although tomatoes had been introduced into England around the same
time as other parts of Europe, they didn't really become
(05:31):
a popular food there for a while, so most English
colonists encountered their first use of tomatoes in cuisine after
having arrived in parts of North America that had previously
been colonized by Spain. So we mentioned Italian cuisine at
the top of the show. But of course tomatoes are
a key ingredient in dishes from other parts of the world,
(05:52):
as well as just a few examples, shak Shuka and
other similar dishes in North Africa and the Middle East
involved eggs poached in a tomato sauce. I'm a fan
of that. The Philippines has sarciato, which is a fish
and tomato dish. Tomatoes were probably introduced into the Indian
subcontinent by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, and by
(06:15):
the nineteenth century they were adding kind of a sour
note to a number of foods, including curries and chutney's,
And then that circles back around to chicken tika masala,
which has a lot of contradictory origin stories but was
popularized by chefs from India who were living in the UK.
There's not one totally standard recipe for chicken tika masala,
(06:36):
but usually it's creamy sauce is made with tomatoes. Of course,
this whole episode is about a court case revolving around
whether tomatoes should be defined as a vegetable or a fruit.
And in botanical terms, as we said, fruits developed from
the ovary of a flower. That is their key defining trait.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
But as a category, vegetables is actually a little Broadly speaking,
vegetables are edible plants or plant parts that don't grow
from the ovaries of flowers, so the term vegetables includes leaves, taproots, tubers, stems,
and flowers themselves. So things like lettuce, carrots, potatoes, celery,
(07:20):
and broccoli. This gets even more confusing when you realize
that potatoes are also in the night shade family. There's
a lot of weird crossover.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Ye, there are a whole lot of night shades beyond
the ones that like grow on vines. Yeah. When it
comes to the way people talk about food, though specifically
in this case, the way English speakers in the United
States and other similar groups talk about food, that definition
of fruit comes from the ovary of a flower, and
(07:50):
vegetables don't. That doesn't always work. Green Beans and other
legumes grow from flower ovaries. Technically they are fruit, and
so are cucumbers. Corn is grass, and each kernel on
an ear of corn is botanically a fruit. We already
mentioned eggplant, bell, peppers, and of course tomatoes all being fruit.
(08:12):
But in culinary terms and this cultural context, people are
more likely to think of all of these foods as
vegetables because of things like their taste and texture and
how they're prepared and served in various dishes. Broadly speaking,
the things we think of as fruits are generally sweeter,
more likely to be served as snacks or side dishes
(08:34):
or in desserts or toppings. Obviously, there are exceptions, things
like lemon or grapefruit, which are fruit but are also
sour rather than sweet. Vegetables often are not as sweet
and are more likely to be incorporated as part of
the main dish. This is all incredibly subjective, and there
are lots of exceptions, and we have not even talked
(08:57):
about how nuts and grains, which most most people don't
think of usually as a fruit or a vegetable, are
in botanical terms again fruit. But if you have grown
up immersed in a culture that thinks about food this way,
this all probably feels innate and even universal. There are
other cultures and languages that approach these categories totally differently
(09:21):
or not at all. There is an entire field called
linguistic ethnobotany that studies the names of different plants than
animals as they are used by different languages and cultures.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
So here in the US, the lack of clarity on
exactly what counts as a fruit and what counts as
a vegetable has led to some disputes and a Supreme
Court case that Tracy wound up finding deeply hilarious. Because
it is we will get to all of that, including
some talk about tariffs after a sponsor break.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
The Supreme Court decision that classified tomatoes as vegetables came
about because of a tariff, in other words, a duty
imposed by the government on imported or exported goods. Tariffs
are a way to regulate trade and were a major
source of revenue for the United States government in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At some points during that period,
(10:24):
there was no federal income tax at all, and at
others income tax rates did exist but were extremely low,
so most of the federal government's revenue came from taxes
on things like alcohol and tobacco, or from tariffs. The
United States at this point had some of the highest
(10:44):
tariff rates in the world, and in some years tariffs
provided almost all of the federal government's revenue. In addition
to providing revenue, tariffs had a major impact on trade
and on the United States relationships with other nations. Over
these years, there were a lot of adjustments to tariff law,
depending on how the government wanted to regulate trade and
(11:07):
how the economy and the federal budget were doing, and
anything else the government wanted to achieve through tariffs. If
the government needed money, tariffs often went up, and if
the government had a surplus, especially a surplus that went
on for multiple years, rates often dropped. There were people
who were opposed to tariffs altogether, seeing them as a
(11:29):
barrier to free trade. Others supported tariffs as a tool
for the federal government to bring in revenue, but opposed
the use of tariffs to specifically try to protect American
business interests. Protectionism versus free trade was an ongoing source
of disagreement and debate. I would say, to some extent,
(11:50):
it still is, even though there's federal income tax now,
so the tariff is not like the sole source of
government income. Sometimes, but not always, disagreements ran along both
party and geographic lines. In the late nineteenth century, Republicans,
especially Northeastern Republicans, generally wanted to use tariffs to protect
(12:11):
American manufacturing interests at that time, and a lot of
the manufacturing was concentrated in the Northeast. But Democrats, especially
Southern Democrats, were often more focused on the idea of
free trade.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
At the same time, tariffs could really make or break
the people who did business in goods that were subject
to them, So people who ran businesses that were really
affected by tariffs lobbied heavily for laws that, of course
would be favorable to their interests. That could be a
reduction in tariffs on goods they wanted to import, or
an increase in tariffs on imported goods from foreign competitors.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
So the tariff law that was at work in Nicks
versus Headen was passed in eighteen eighty three, following broad
calls for tariff reform, but broad reform is not what
happened at all. After the eighteen eighty presidential election, Republicans
controlled both Houses of Congress and Republican James Garfield had
(13:08):
been elected president, But at first the government did not
take advantage of this situation of controlling both houses and
the presidency to get some action taken to pass a
tariff for form package that would align with the Republican
Party's interests. Then, in the eighteen eighty two midterm elections,
(13:29):
Republicans lost their majority in the House, so getting a
tariff bill passed in the lame duck sessions before the
inauguration became a big priority. Overall, Republicans wanted to lower tariffs,
but not as much as the Democrats would try to
lower them once they had a majority in the House.
Many Democrats already in Congress also seemed to have seen
(13:50):
this as something of an opportunity because if the Republicans
passed a tariff for form package before the end of
the session, the Democrats wouldn't have to deal with it
two and control of the House. Yeah, it seems like overall,
I wanted to try to get things they wanted, but
like not block the package entirely. There was general agreement
(14:13):
that big changes needed to happen. Among other things, the
US Tariff Commission, created in March of eighteen eighty two,
had called for an average twenty five percent reduction in tariffs,
but there was way less agreement on the details, especially
when it came to what the House wanted versus what
the Senate wanted. Without getting two in the weeds on this,
(14:35):
this was a laborious and extremely contentious process, with around
two hundred votes on various aspects of this bill in
each House of Congress.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
During this process, the House Committee on Rules also issued
a special order that for the rest of that congressional session,
the House could suspend the rules with a simple majority
vote rather than the two thirds majority that was normally needed.
This was the first time that the House Rules Committee
altered the standing rules for the sake of one specific bill.
(15:08):
So I read some conflicting and also confusing explanations about
what prompted this special order. But as I understand it,
if the House had voted on the Senate's version of
the bill, it probably would have passed, and under the
normal standing rules, that's normally what they would have done.
(15:29):
But there were a lot of representatives who wanted higher
tariffs than what was in the Senate version, so what
they wanted was for the bill to be sent to
a committee to work on. They did not have the
two thirds majority that was normally needed to waive the
rules and send the bill to a committee, though, so
this special order was a way to get the bill
(15:50):
into a committee rather than just passing the Senate version. Ultimately,
an Act to Reduce Internal Revenue Taxation and for other
purposes was signed into law on March third, eighteen eighty three,
and it did make a bunch of tariff changes, but
without really doing anything that people who felt strongly about
it had actually wanted. There was no huge overall reduction
(16:13):
in tariffs, and there was no broad reform of the system. Instead,
tariffs were reduced on some items but raised on others,
and the whole bill was very long and complicated. Its
critics called it the mongrel tariff.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
So one printed version of this act and its schedules
is thirty nine pages long. Now, that does not sound
that long by today's standards, when sometimes there are bills
that run more than a thousand pages or multiple thousands
of pages. But bills were a lot shorter at the time,
and according to one article I found, even today, the
(16:51):
average bill is only about eighteen pages long, So thre's
thousand or multiple thousand pages bills are kind of outliers.
Over the first handful of pages of this bill, there's
a lot about tobacco and snuff and tobacco products. The
import of obscene material is banned, as is the import
(17:11):
of contraceptives and abortifations. Imported watches, watchcases, watch movements, and
the like are prohibited from copying the name or trademark
of any domestic versions of the same products, unless the
domestic manufacturer of those products is the one who is
importing them, and then they are about twenty five pages
(17:34):
of schedules. So, in other words, lists of imported items
and the duties to be.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Collected on them. Schedules included chemical products, earthenware and glassware, metals,
wood and woodenwares, sugar, tobacco provisions, liquors, cotton and cotton goods, hemp,
jute and flax goods, wool and woolens, silk and silk goods,
book papers, it's et cetera, and.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Sundrys so Some random and kind of hilarious examples from
all of this fancy perfumed and all descriptions of toilet
soap fifteen cents per pound, all imitations of natural mineral waters,
and all artificial mineral waters. Thirty percentum ad volorum prepared chalk,
(18:24):
precipitated chalk, French chalk, red chalk, and all other chalk
preparations which are not specifically enumerated or provided for in
this Act. Twenty percentum advlorum waste all not specifically enumerated
or provided for in this Act. Ten percentum ad valorum
(18:44):
gunnycloth not bagging valued at ten cents or less per
square yard, three cents per pound, valued at over ten
cents per square yard four cents a pound, but then
bags and bagging and like manufacturers not specifically enumerated or
provided for in this Act, except bagging for cotton composed
(19:05):
why or in part of flax, hemp, juice, gunnycloth, gunnybags,
or other material forty percentum advalorum. Then there's the free list,
which goes on for about another ten pages. Items on
the free list include albumin ambergris, blood bones, leeches, cocone, eal,
lemon juice and lime juice, vaccine, virus, stuffed birds, silkworms, eggs, coffee, tea, fossils, baloney, sausages,
(19:34):
and junk comma.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Old. Although coffee is on the free list, acorns, dandelion root,
raw or prepared, and all other articles used or intended
to be used as coffee or as substitutes therefore not
specifically enumerated or provided for in this act that's going
to cost you two cents per pound. Coffee is free.
(19:58):
Fake coffee is not. Get out of here with your
weird herbal teas.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Yes, the dispute in Nicks versus Headen involved Schedule G
provisions which included vegetables in their natural state or in
salt or brine not specifically enumerated or provided for in
this Act. Ten percent ad dolorum, but then on the
(20:23):
free list was fruits green, ripe or dried not specifically
enumerated or provided for in this Act. Since tomatoes were
not specifically enumerated or provided for in the Act, if
they were vegetables, the tariff was ten percent add blorum,
but if they were fruits, they were free. So this
(20:43):
brings us to John Nixon Company, established in eighteen thirty nine,
which is one of the first successful fruit and vegetable
importers in the United States, after developments and things like steamships, railroads,
and insulated shipping containers made that a potentially viable business.
John Nicks had four sons, John W. Nix, George W. Nix,
(21:05):
Frank W. Nix, and Robert W. Nix, who all became
part of their father's business. I don't know if the
W stands for the same thing for all of them,
and if so, what it stands Willard. This firm was
headquartered in New York, but it had a national reach.
In addition to importing produce from other countries, John Nixon
(21:28):
Company also built relationships with farmers and other parts of
the United States, including Florida, Texas, and California. They wanted
to understand these farmers' businesses and also encouraged them to
expand the types of fruits and vegetables that they were
growing domestically. The Nixes were also very vocal within the
(21:48):
New York business community and in the fruit and vegetable
industry more broadly. While the eighteen eighty three tariff law
was being debated, John Nicks teamed with E. P.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Loomis and Clifford L. Middleton to write a letter protesting
the proposed tariff on vegetables, which they described as a
three hundred percent increase. They argued that they imported vegetables
from other countries primarily during March, April, and May, when
US farms couldn't produce enough to meet customer demand. They
(22:20):
noted that some foods like onions, were an affordable staple
for middle class families, but that US farms just could
not supply them during those months. They didn't spell this out,
but this is because of the climate and growing seasons.
Places where the weather was warmer could plant these foods earlier,
or even grow them year round. So at first, after
(22:41):
the new tariff law went into effect, despite these objections,
John Nixon Company paid tariffs on vegetable imports as required,
but in late eighteen eighty six, Edward Long Headen, collector
of the Port of New York, tried to collect the
tariff on a load of tomatoes that had come from
the West End Ease. Nicks argued that he should not
(23:03):
have to pay a tariff on tomatoes because they were fruits,
not vegetables. Headen disagreed, collected the tariff anyway, which Nicks
paid under protest, and then on February fourth, eighteen eighty seven,
Nicks sued him over it. We're going to talk more
about that after we pause for a sponsor break.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
We don't have court transcripts from the John Nixon Company
original lawsuit, which was filed in the Circuit Court of
the United States for the Southern District of New York,
but we do have a summary of what happened at
trial from the majority opinion in the US Supreme Court
case Nicks versus Headen.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
First, Nix's attorney read some definitions into evidence, specifically the
definitions of the words fruit and vegets. He read from
three different dictionaries, Websters, Woosters, and the Imperial Dictionary. Then
he called two witnesses, both of whom had been in
business selling fruit and vegetables for about three decades. He
(24:15):
asked each of them if, after hearing these definitions, the
words fruit or vegetable had quote any special meaning in
trade or commerce different from those read.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
So one of them answered, quote, well, it does not
classify all things there, but they are correct as far
as they go. It does not take all kinds of
fruit or vegetables, it takes a portion of them. I
think the words fruit and vegetable have the same meaning
in trade today that they had on March first, eighteen
eighty three. I understand that the term fruit is applied
(24:48):
in trade only to such plants or parts of plants
as contain the seeds. There are more vegetables than those
in the enumeration given in Webster's dictionary under the term vegetable,
as cabbage, cluliflower, turnips, potatoes, peas, beans, and the like,
probably covered by the words and the like. The other
(25:09):
said quote, I don't think the term fruit or the
term vegetables had in March eighteen eighty three and prior
there too, any special meaning in trade and commerce in
this country different from that which I have read here.
From the dictionaries. After that, Nix's attorney read the definition
of the word tomato out of the dictionary in which
(25:31):
it was defined as a fruit, just as a note,
were not reading the definitions themselves, because I don't know
which version of any of these dictionaries the attorneys were using,
and the definitions can really vary from like one addition
to the other of these, even like within Websters or whatever.
But all of the ones I checked at some point
(25:53):
said that tomato was a fruit.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
The attorney for the Collector of the Port of New
York read number of other definitions out of Webster's dictionary,
including the definitions for pea, eggplant, cucumber, squash, and pepper.
We can logically conclude that the dictionary described all of
these as fruit. And then Nix's attorney followed up with
some more dictionary definitions, including potato, turnip, parsnip, cauliflower, cabbage, carrot,
(26:23):
and bean from both Webster's and Wooster's dictionaries. And according
to what was described and the majority opinion from the
Supreme Court case.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
That was all the evidence, all of it. It was
two witness statements and attorneys reading out of the dictionary
that sounds.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Like the best day in court ever. I like it.
I love the idea of just reading dictionary things at
each other with Scowley faces. Another side note if you're
like Wooster's Dictionary, was that Joseph Emerson Worcester was Noah
Webster's main dictionary competitor in an intense rivalry that became
known as the Dictionary Wars. Very likely that that will.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Be an episode in the future, Yet with such an
intense rivalry that it went on for many years after
Noel Webster was dead. Anyway, the Circuit Court ruled in
favor of the Collector for the Court of New York
that he was correct tomatoes were vegetables. So John Nixon
Company appealed that ruling. This case was submitted to the
(27:23):
US Supreme Court on April twenty fourth, eighteen ninety three,
and then decided on May tenth.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
In the words of Justice Horace Gray, writing for the
majority opinion, quote the passages cited from the dictionaries define
the word fruit as the seed of plants, or that
part of plants which contains the seed, and especially the juicy,
pulpy products of certain plants covering and containing the seed.
These definitions have no tendency to show that tomatoes are
(27:51):
fruit as distinguished from vegetables in common speech or within
the meaning of the terrifact. There being no evidence that
the words fruit and vegetables have acquired any special meaning
in trade or commerce, they must receive their ordinary meaning
of that meaning. The Court is bound to take judicial notice,
as it does in regard to all words in our
(28:12):
own tongue, and upon such a question, dictionaries are admitted
not as evidence, but only as aids to the memory
and understanding of the court. Gray's opinion went on to say,
quote Botanically speaking, tomatoes are the fruit of the vine,
just as are cucumbers, squashes, beans, and peas. But in
(28:32):
the common language of the people, whether cellars or consumers
of provisions, all these are vegetables which are grown in
kitchen gardens, in which whether eaten, cooked or raw, are
like potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets, cauliflower, cabbage, celery, and lettuce,
usually served at dinner in with or after the soup,
(28:54):
fish or meats, which constitute the principal part of the repast,
and not like fruits generally as dessert. The opinion concluded quote,
the attempt to class tomatoes as fruit is not unlike
a recent attempt to class beans as seeds, of which
mister Justice Bradley, speaking for this Court, said, we do
(29:15):
not see why they should be classified as seeds anymore
than walnuts should be so classified. Both are seeds in
the language of botany or natural history, but not in
commerce nor in common parlance. On the other hand, in
speaking generally of provisions, beans may well be included under
the term vegetables as an article of food on our tables,
(29:38):
whether baked or boiled, or forming the basis of soup.
They are used as a vegetable as well when ripe
as when green. This is the principal use to which
they are put. Beyond the common knowledge which we have
on this subject, very little evidence is necessary or can
be produced. With that the Supreme Court affirmed the lower
(29:59):
Court's judgem so and the Supreme Court's viewed tomatoes are vegetables,
at least for the purpose of the tariff. That same day,
the Supreme Court also issued its decision in Hollander versus Magone,
which was similarly about the meaning of words in the
context of the tariff law. Specifically, that question was whether
(30:19):
beer was liquor. Hollander and Company had paid a tariff
on some imported beer that had soured in transit. The
law did not allow the tariff to be waived on
liquors that had been damaged during shipping. Hollander's attorney argued
that this clause did not apply because this was beer,
not liquor. The court noted that the word liquor was
often used to mean an intoxicating beverage that had been distilled,
(30:43):
not one that was simply fermented, but that in the
context and placement of this term in the tariff law,
it was clearly meant to incorporate other intoxicating beverages, not
just distilled ones. Nicks versus Headnt has been cited in
more than fifty other state and federal court decisions since
eighteen ninety three, and a lot of them have to
(31:05):
do with the meanings of words, like whether a dog
rescue operation.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Was a kennel. If it was a kennel, it would
be in violation of zoning laws. That was in Coal
versus New Siwickly Township Zoning Hearing Board No said the
court dog rescues are not kennels or in United States
versus Peddix on whether bitcoins or money. Again no, because
(31:33):
in the common language of the people, money is government issued,
regulated dollars or things connected directly to dollars, like credit
cards or money orders. This decision was controversial because other
earlier decisions and at least one subsequent one, decided the opposite.
Or in Robinson versus Liberty Mutual Insurance Company on whether
(31:56):
an exclusion for property damage caused by insects and vermin
applied to spiders since spiders are aracnids and not insects. Yes,
the court ruled the exclusion did apply. We know that
spiders are technically iracnids, but clearly this provision applied to
(32:18):
them as well.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Should have just said bugs. Nicks versus Headen has also
been cited in broader discussions in the context of whether
dictionary definitions are evidence or if their aids to the court.
There are also many other cases that hinge on what
words mean that do not cite Nicks versus Headen. We'll
(32:39):
talk about a few of those on Friday, since they're
not directly connected to this one. Also, the terms ordinary meaning,
plain meaning, and common use. All of those show up
in legal arguments related to those ideas, and sometimes those
have slightly different meanings. In two thousand and five, New
Jersey chose the tomato as its state and vendegetable after
(33:00):
a group of fourth graders cited Nicks versus Headen in
a campaign for the tomato to be included among the choices.
The tomato is the state fruit in Ohio and Tennessee,
and in Arkansas, the South Arkansas vine right pink tomato
is both the state fruit and the state vegetable. Although
(33:22):
the act making this designation doesn't specifically cite Nicks versus Headen,
it does note that quote the tomato is botanically a
fruit and used as a vegetable.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Do you have delicious listener mail? I do I have
listener mail? That is from Jordan. Jordan's email is titled
Scott Joplin the Texarcana Native, but not really, and Jordan
wrote height Tracy Holly as someone who was born and
raised in Texarcana, I'm from the Texas side. Very important distinction.
(33:56):
I love your episode on Scott Joplin. He's arguably the
most influential person from techs Arcana who's not from techs Arcana.
I distinctly remember growing up that anytime someone tried to
choose him as a subject of a history or research paper,
they usually had to switch topics or pivot to something
like the general history of ragtime, simply for the lack
(34:17):
of source material to meet the grading requirements. I loved
hearing all these new details about a figure whose face
I've seen all my life on a mural downtown. I
moved away almost fifteen years ago, but this episode happened
to come out the week before I went home to
see some friends. While I was in town, I went
to go take some pictures of that mural and was
(34:37):
pleased to find it had a major facelift. I've attached
some pictures. The mural was done by Art Pletcher with
surface bred by CD Little. It's located on the back
of the Texarkana Regional Arts and Humanities Council or the
Track building at the corner of Main Street and West Third.
It's also across from the historic pro Theater. As a
(34:58):
railroad town that seems some of its highs and lows,
this is now a lovely selection of historic downtown that
is recently being revived, and it was really cool to see,
if not for the episode, I wouldn't have taken the
time to go down and explore the area, so per usual.
Thank you so much for your work. You provide me
with an endless supply of did you know facts that
(35:18):
makes me sound much more well read than I actually am.
Also provided a pet tax of my parents' dog, Striker.
He's very anxious, very sweet border Collie born during the pandemic,
so this is him emotionally exhausted after the family my
parents so said for the holidays had finally left. Thanks again,
Jordan inadvertently didn't send the dog picture and sent that
(35:41):
as a follow up, very cute, so sweet. I'm going
to say I did not look up the how to
pronounce pero theater, and it would not shock me to
learn that maybe it's per rot, because that seems like
the kind of word that maybe would have a different
local pronunciation than the one that is zixpected. Uh, yeah,
(36:02):
I don't I don't remember what word there was a
proper name on the show within the last year that
like had an extremely straightforward spelling and h like an
English Language definition standard pronunciation that I looked up as
(36:23):
a joke, like better make sure they don't say it
differently there haha. And it turned out they did, and
I was like, well, well, I wish I could remember
now which term it was. I don't remember anyway, this
is a beautiful mural. It's it's got Scott Joplin's face
to his father of rag Time on it. Uh. And
(36:45):
then there's one that's got like a lot of sheet
music covers for the entertainer, the santhemum pineapple rag trem
nisia maple leaf rag. It's very lovely. I like this
mural a whole lot, and if I were in tech sarcana,
I would go have a look at it. So thank
you so much Jordan for sending this to us.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
If you would like to send us a note about
this or any other podcast, we're at History Podcasts at
iHeartRadio dot com and we're all over social media at
miss in History. That's were you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,
and Instagram, and you can subscribe to our show on
the iHeartMedia app wherever I do you like to get
your podcasts. Stuff you missed in History Class is a
(37:33):
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Recently, we were trying to brainstorm some ideas for the
show that were food related in some way. We talk
about food fairly often, but this was for like a
specific project. Yeah, and I briefly thought about doing a
history of the tomato because there's just so much stuff
there that really fascinates me. Like, for example, tomatoes are
(00:37):
such a key part of so much Italian cuisine, but
they are not even native to the same continent as Italy.
There's that whole thing where people in parts of the
world used to think tomatoes are poisonous, and they are
in the night shade family, which does include some really
toxic plants and people can have allergies and intolerances and
(00:58):
things like that. But also tomatoes are just acidic enough
to leach the lead out of dishes and utensils, so
in the era when people were eating off of lead
a lot, they really might have been helping to poison people.
We've also done histories of specific foods before. Some of
those episodes are ones that I researched and wrote, so
(01:19):
I know that can be done, but as I looked
at this, it just increasingly seemed maybe not workable for tomatoes.
You could do any one of those nodules of the
tomato story and it's its own story. It would be
its own thing. And yeah, and today we do have
one piece of it that it's this whole thing, it's
its own thing, which is Nicks versus Headen. That was
(01:42):
the US Supreme Court decision that made tomatoes a vegetable
at least for tariff purposes. I do love a weird
court case. And that also gave us the opportunity to
at least touch on some of those things that I
find so interesting about tomatoes in the.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
So, there are several different species of tomato. The one
that's cultivated and eaten most is Solanum, like a persicum,
but there are thousands of varieties of that one species
growing around the world. And although a lot of people
like to think of tomatoes as vegetables, and the cork
case we're talking about agreed. In botanical terms, you've probably
(02:23):
heard this before. They are a fruit. Specifically, they're a berry.
So berries are fleshy fruits that develop from the ovary
of a flower. Berries do not have pits, but they
can have seeds, and under this definition, bananas are also berries,
and so are eggplants and bell peppers.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Side note, despite their names, raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries are
not berries according to botanical definitions. They are all aggregate fruits,
meaning that they develop from lots of flower ovaries instead
of just one. So for blackberries and raspberries, that aggregated
parts are called druplets. For strawberries, the true fruit in
(03:04):
the strawberry is all those little pips on the exterior.
Those are fruits called achnes, and the rest of the
strawberry is a fleshy accessory receptacle that's holding all those akines.
Other akenes include dandelions. The little seeds at the end
of the dandelion fluff are fruit as well. This information
(03:26):
we are offering for informational purposes only, and not as
ammunition to go be pedantic at people when they call
strawberries berries or whatever. I just want to say, fleshy
accessory receptacle sounds like the title of a Kurt Vannaget
short story. Yeah, it doesn't sound like something you would
want to eat I mean I do. Maybe I want
(03:48):
to eat strawberries all the time. Oh.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Same. So tomatoes are native to the Andes Mountains in
South America, and there's evidence that people in this region
domesticated the tomato, but it's less clear whether they ate
as food. It can be really tricky to find archaeological
evidence to answer these kinds of questions, and the oral
histories and food ways of many of these peoples were
(04:10):
disrupted through European conquest and colonization. But at some point
tomato plants were introduced from the Andes Mountains to Mexico.
They were definitely being used as a food source there
by the time Spain started colonizing the region in fifteen nineteen.
The word tomato comes from the Nahuatal language, and the
(04:31):
Nahwuas developed a wide range of dishes incorporating this fruit.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah. Maybe at some time we'll have an unearthed discovery
about like residues on the inside of bits of pottery
to answer the question of.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
What so much lycopene?
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yeah, well, we'll see maybe. But as the Spanish conquered
and colonized the surrounding areas, they introduced tomato plants as well.
Starting in the Caribbean. Spanish peace people returning to Europe
took tomatoes with them, carrying them first to Spain and
then to Italy. The first written record of a tomato
(05:08):
in Europe was in an Italian herbal in fifteen forty four.
It's likely that tomatoes made their way farther north into
North America, not from Mexico or the Caribbean, but from Spain,
again brought by Spanish colonists in the seventeenth century. And
although tomatoes had been introduced into England around the same
time as other parts of Europe, they didn't really become
(05:31):
a popular food there for a while, so most English
colonists encountered their first use of tomatoes in cuisine after
having arrived in parts of North America that had previously
been colonized by Spain. So we mentioned Italian cuisine at
the top of the show. But of course tomatoes are
a key ingredient in dishes from other parts of the world,
(05:52):
as well as just a few examples, shak Shuka and
other similar dishes in North Africa and the Middle East
involved eggs poached in a tomato sauce. I'm a fan
of that. The Philippines has sarciato, which is a fish
and tomato dish. Tomatoes were probably introduced into the Indian
subcontinent by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, and by
(06:15):
the nineteenth century they were adding kind of a sour
note to a number of foods, including curries and chutney's,
And then that circles back around to chicken tika masala,
which has a lot of contradictory origin stories but was
popularized by chefs from India who were living in the UK.
There's not one totally standard recipe for chicken tika masala,
(06:36):
but usually it's creamy sauce is made with tomatoes. Of course,
this whole episode is about a court case revolving around
whether tomatoes should be defined as a vegetable or a fruit.
And in botanical terms, as we said, fruits developed from
the ovary of a flower. That is their key defining trait.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
But as a category, vegetables is actually a little Broadly speaking,
vegetables are edible plants or plant parts that don't grow
from the ovaries of flowers, so the term vegetables includes leaves, taproots, tubers, stems,
and flowers themselves. So things like lettuce, carrots, potatoes, celery,
(07:20):
and broccoli. This gets even more confusing when you realize
that potatoes are also in the night shade family. There's
a lot of weird crossover.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Ye, there are a whole lot of night shades beyond
the ones that like grow on vines. Yeah. When it
comes to the way people talk about food, though specifically
in this case, the way English speakers in the United
States and other similar groups talk about food, that definition
of fruit comes from the ovary of a flower, and
(07:50):
vegetables don't. That doesn't always work. Green Beans and other
legumes grow from flower ovaries. Technically they are fruit, and
so are cucumbers. Corn is grass, and each kernel on
an ear of corn is botanically a fruit. We already
mentioned eggplant, bell, peppers, and of course tomatoes all being fruit.
(08:12):
But in culinary terms and this cultural context, people are
more likely to think of all of these foods as
vegetables because of things like their taste and texture and
how they're prepared and served in various dishes. Broadly speaking,
the things we think of as fruits are generally sweeter,
more likely to be served as snacks or side dishes
(08:34):
or in desserts or toppings. Obviously, there are exceptions, things
like lemon or grapefruit, which are fruit but are also
sour rather than sweet. Vegetables often are not as sweet
and are more likely to be incorporated as part of
the main dish. This is all incredibly subjective, and there
are lots of exceptions, and we have not even talked
(08:57):
about how nuts and grains, which most most people don't
think of usually as a fruit or a vegetable, are
in botanical terms again fruit. But if you have grown
up immersed in a culture that thinks about food this way,
this all probably feels innate and even universal. There are
other cultures and languages that approach these categories totally differently
(09:21):
or not at all. There is an entire field called
linguistic ethnobotany that studies the names of different plants than
animals as they are used by different languages and cultures.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
So here in the US, the lack of clarity on
exactly what counts as a fruit and what counts as
a vegetable has led to some disputes and a Supreme
Court case that Tracy wound up finding deeply hilarious. Because
it is we will get to all of that, including
some talk about tariffs after a sponsor break.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
The Supreme Court decision that classified tomatoes as vegetables came
about because of a tariff, in other words, a duty
imposed by the government on imported or exported goods. Tariffs
are a way to regulate trade and were a major
source of revenue for the United States government in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At some points during that period,
(10:24):
there was no federal income tax at all, and at
others income tax rates did exist but were extremely low,
so most of the federal government's revenue came from taxes
on things like alcohol and tobacco, or from tariffs. The
United States at this point had some of the highest
(10:44):
tariff rates in the world, and in some years tariffs
provided almost all of the federal government's revenue. In addition
to providing revenue, tariffs had a major impact on trade
and on the United States relationships with other nations. Over
these years, there were a lot of adjustments to tariff law,
depending on how the government wanted to regulate trade and
(11:07):
how the economy and the federal budget were doing, and
anything else the government wanted to achieve through tariffs. If
the government needed money, tariffs often went up, and if
the government had a surplus, especially a surplus that went
on for multiple years, rates often dropped. There were people
who were opposed to tariffs altogether, seeing them as a
(11:29):
barrier to free trade. Others supported tariffs as a tool
for the federal government to bring in revenue, but opposed
the use of tariffs to specifically try to protect American
business interests. Protectionism versus free trade was an ongoing source
of disagreement and debate. I would say, to some extent,
(11:50):
it still is, even though there's federal income tax now,
so the tariff is not like the sole source of
government income. Sometimes, but not always, disagreements ran along both
party and geographic lines. In the late nineteenth century, Republicans,
especially Northeastern Republicans, generally wanted to use tariffs to protect
(12:11):
American manufacturing interests at that time, and a lot of
the manufacturing was concentrated in the Northeast. But Democrats, especially
Southern Democrats, were often more focused on the idea of
free trade.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
At the same time, tariffs could really make or break
the people who did business in goods that were subject
to them, So people who ran businesses that were really
affected by tariffs lobbied heavily for laws that, of course
would be favorable to their interests. That could be a
reduction in tariffs on goods they wanted to import, or
an increase in tariffs on imported goods from foreign competitors.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
So the tariff law that was at work in Nicks
versus Headen was passed in eighteen eighty three, following broad
calls for tariff reform, but broad reform is not what
happened at all. After the eighteen eighty presidential election, Republicans
controlled both Houses of Congress and Republican James Garfield had
(13:08):
been elected president, But at first the government did not
take advantage of this situation of controlling both houses and
the presidency to get some action taken to pass a
tariff for form package that would align with the Republican
Party's interests. Then, in the eighteen eighty two midterm elections,
(13:29):
Republicans lost their majority in the House, so getting a
tariff bill passed in the lame duck sessions before the
inauguration became a big priority. Overall, Republicans wanted to lower tariffs,
but not as much as the Democrats would try to
lower them once they had a majority in the House.
Many Democrats already in Congress also seemed to have seen
(13:50):
this as something of an opportunity because if the Republicans
passed a tariff for form package before the end of
the session, the Democrats wouldn't have to deal with it
two and control of the House. Yeah, it seems like overall,
I wanted to try to get things they wanted, but
like not block the package entirely. There was general agreement
(14:13):
that big changes needed to happen. Among other things, the
US Tariff Commission, created in March of eighteen eighty two,
had called for an average twenty five percent reduction in tariffs,
but there was way less agreement on the details, especially
when it came to what the House wanted versus what
the Senate wanted. Without getting two in the weeds on this,
(14:35):
this was a laborious and extremely contentious process, with around
two hundred votes on various aspects of this bill in
each House of Congress.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
During this process, the House Committee on Rules also issued
a special order that for the rest of that congressional session,
the House could suspend the rules with a simple majority
vote rather than the two thirds majority that was normally needed.
This was the first time that the House Rules Committee
altered the standing rules for the sake of one specific bill.
(15:08):
So I read some conflicting and also confusing explanations about
what prompted this special order. But as I understand it,
if the House had voted on the Senate's version of
the bill, it probably would have passed, and under the
normal standing rules, that's normally what they would have done.
(15:29):
But there were a lot of representatives who wanted higher
tariffs than what was in the Senate version, so what
they wanted was for the bill to be sent to
a committee to work on. They did not have the
two thirds majority that was normally needed to waive the
rules and send the bill to a committee, though, so
this special order was a way to get the bill
(15:50):
into a committee rather than just passing the Senate version. Ultimately,
an Act to Reduce Internal Revenue Taxation and for other
purposes was signed into law on March third, eighteen eighty three,
and it did make a bunch of tariff changes, but
without really doing anything that people who felt strongly about
it had actually wanted. There was no huge overall reduction
(16:13):
in tariffs, and there was no broad reform of the system. Instead,
tariffs were reduced on some items but raised on others,
and the whole bill was very long and complicated. Its
critics called it the mongrel tariff.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
So one printed version of this act and its schedules
is thirty nine pages long. Now, that does not sound
that long by today's standards, when sometimes there are bills
that run more than a thousand pages or multiple thousands
of pages. But bills were a lot shorter at the time,
and according to one article I found, even today, the
(16:51):
average bill is only about eighteen pages long, So thre's
thousand or multiple thousand pages bills are kind of outliers.
Over the first handful of pages of this bill, there's
a lot about tobacco and snuff and tobacco products. The
import of obscene material is banned, as is the import
(17:11):
of contraceptives and abortifations. Imported watches, watchcases, watch movements, and
the like are prohibited from copying the name or trademark
of any domestic versions of the same products, unless the
domestic manufacturer of those products is the one who is
importing them, and then they are about twenty five pages
(17:34):
of schedules. So, in other words, lists of imported items
and the duties to be.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Collected on them. Schedules included chemical products, earthenware and glassware, metals,
wood and woodenwares, sugar, tobacco provisions, liquors, cotton and cotton goods, hemp,
jute and flax goods, wool and woolens, silk and silk goods,
book papers, it's et cetera, and.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Sundrys so Some random and kind of hilarious examples from
all of this fancy perfumed and all descriptions of toilet
soap fifteen cents per pound, all imitations of natural mineral waters,
and all artificial mineral waters. Thirty percentum ad volorum prepared chalk,
(18:24):
precipitated chalk, French chalk, red chalk, and all other chalk
preparations which are not specifically enumerated or provided for in
this Act. Twenty percentum advlorum waste all not specifically enumerated
or provided for in this Act. Ten percentum ad valorum
(18:44):
gunnycloth not bagging valued at ten cents or less per
square yard, three cents per pound, valued at over ten
cents per square yard four cents a pound, but then
bags and bagging and like manufacturers not specifically enumerated or
provided for in this Act, except bagging for cotton composed
(19:05):
why or in part of flax, hemp, juice, gunnycloth, gunnybags,
or other material forty percentum advalorum. Then there's the free list,
which goes on for about another ten pages. Items on
the free list include albumin ambergris, blood bones, leeches, cocone, eal,
lemon juice and lime juice, vaccine, virus, stuffed birds, silkworms, eggs, coffee, tea, fossils, baloney, sausages,
(19:34):
and junk comma.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Old. Although coffee is on the free list, acorns, dandelion root,
raw or prepared, and all other articles used or intended
to be used as coffee or as substitutes therefore not
specifically enumerated or provided for in this act that's going
to cost you two cents per pound. Coffee is free.
(19:58):
Fake coffee is not. Get out of here with your
weird herbal teas.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Yes, the dispute in Nicks versus Headen involved Schedule G
provisions which included vegetables in their natural state or in
salt or brine not specifically enumerated or provided for in
this Act. Ten percent ad dolorum, but then on the
(20:23):
free list was fruits green, ripe or dried not specifically
enumerated or provided for in this Act. Since tomatoes were
not specifically enumerated or provided for in the Act, if
they were vegetables, the tariff was ten percent add blorum,
but if they were fruits, they were free. So this
(20:43):
brings us to John Nixon Company, established in eighteen thirty nine,
which is one of the first successful fruit and vegetable
importers in the United States, after developments and things like steamships, railroads,
and insulated shipping containers made that a potentially viable business.
John Nicks had four sons, John W. Nix, George W. Nix,
(21:05):
Frank W. Nix, and Robert W. Nix, who all became
part of their father's business. I don't know if the
W stands for the same thing for all of them,
and if so, what it stands Willard. This firm was
headquartered in New York, but it had a national reach.
In addition to importing produce from other countries, John Nixon
(21:28):
Company also built relationships with farmers and other parts of
the United States, including Florida, Texas, and California. They wanted
to understand these farmers' businesses and also encouraged them to
expand the types of fruits and vegetables that they were
growing domestically. The Nixes were also very vocal within the
(21:48):
New York business community and in the fruit and vegetable
industry more broadly. While the eighteen eighty three tariff law
was being debated, John Nicks teamed with E. P.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Loomis and Clifford L. Middleton to write a letter protesting
the proposed tariff on vegetables, which they described as a
three hundred percent increase. They argued that they imported vegetables
from other countries primarily during March, April, and May, when
US farms couldn't produce enough to meet customer demand. They
(22:20):
noted that some foods like onions, were an affordable staple
for middle class families, but that US farms just could
not supply them during those months. They didn't spell this out,
but this is because of the climate and growing seasons.
Places where the weather was warmer could plant these foods earlier,
or even grow them year round. So at first, after
(22:41):
the new tariff law went into effect, despite these objections,
John Nixon Company paid tariffs on vegetable imports as required,
but in late eighteen eighty six, Edward Long Headen, collector
of the Port of New York, tried to collect the
tariff on a load of tomatoes that had come from
the West End Ease. Nicks argued that he should not
(23:03):
have to pay a tariff on tomatoes because they were fruits,
not vegetables. Headen disagreed, collected the tariff anyway, which Nicks
paid under protest, and then on February fourth, eighteen eighty seven,
Nicks sued him over it. We're going to talk more
about that after we pause for a sponsor break.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
We don't have court transcripts from the John Nixon Company
original lawsuit, which was filed in the Circuit Court of
the United States for the Southern District of New York,
but we do have a summary of what happened at
trial from the majority opinion in the US Supreme Court
case Nicks versus Headen.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
First, Nix's attorney read some definitions into evidence, specifically the
definitions of the words fruit and vegets. He read from
three different dictionaries, Websters, Woosters, and the Imperial Dictionary. Then
he called two witnesses, both of whom had been in
business selling fruit and vegetables for about three decades. He
(24:15):
asked each of them if, after hearing these definitions, the
words fruit or vegetable had quote any special meaning in
trade or commerce different from those read.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
So one of them answered, quote, well, it does not
classify all things there, but they are correct as far
as they go. It does not take all kinds of
fruit or vegetables, it takes a portion of them. I
think the words fruit and vegetable have the same meaning
in trade today that they had on March first, eighteen
eighty three. I understand that the term fruit is applied
(24:48):
in trade only to such plants or parts of plants
as contain the seeds. There are more vegetables than those
in the enumeration given in Webster's dictionary under the term vegetable,
as cabbage, cluliflower, turnips, potatoes, peas, beans, and the like,
probably covered by the words and the like. The other
(25:09):
said quote, I don't think the term fruit or the
term vegetables had in March eighteen eighty three and prior
there too, any special meaning in trade and commerce in
this country different from that which I have read here.
From the dictionaries. After that, Nix's attorney read the definition
of the word tomato out of the dictionary in which
(25:31):
it was defined as a fruit, just as a note,
were not reading the definitions themselves, because I don't know
which version of any of these dictionaries the attorneys were using,
and the definitions can really vary from like one addition
to the other of these, even like within Websters or whatever.
But all of the ones I checked at some point
(25:53):
said that tomato was a fruit.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
The attorney for the Collector of the Port of New
York read number of other definitions out of Webster's dictionary,
including the definitions for pea, eggplant, cucumber, squash, and pepper.
We can logically conclude that the dictionary described all of
these as fruit. And then Nix's attorney followed up with
some more dictionary definitions, including potato, turnip, parsnip, cauliflower, cabbage, carrot,
(26:23):
and bean from both Webster's and Wooster's dictionaries. And according
to what was described and the majority opinion from the
Supreme Court case.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
That was all the evidence, all of it. It was
two witness statements and attorneys reading out of the dictionary
that sounds.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Like the best day in court ever. I like it.
I love the idea of just reading dictionary things at
each other with Scowley faces. Another side note if you're
like Wooster's Dictionary, was that Joseph Emerson Worcester was Noah
Webster's main dictionary competitor in an intense rivalry that became
known as the Dictionary Wars. Very likely that that will.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Be an episode in the future, Yet with such an
intense rivalry that it went on for many years after
Noel Webster was dead. Anyway, the Circuit Court ruled in
favor of the Collector for the Court of New York
that he was correct tomatoes were vegetables. So John Nixon
Company appealed that ruling. This case was submitted to the
(27:23):
US Supreme Court on April twenty fourth, eighteen ninety three,
and then decided on May tenth.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
In the words of Justice Horace Gray, writing for the
majority opinion, quote the passages cited from the dictionaries define
the word fruit as the seed of plants, or that
part of plants which contains the seed, and especially the juicy,
pulpy products of certain plants covering and containing the seed.
These definitions have no tendency to show that tomatoes are
(27:51):
fruit as distinguished from vegetables in common speech or within
the meaning of the terrifact. There being no evidence that
the words fruit and vegetables have acquired any special meaning
in trade or commerce, they must receive their ordinary meaning
of that meaning. The Court is bound to take judicial notice,
as it does in regard to all words in our
(28:12):
own tongue, and upon such a question, dictionaries are admitted
not as evidence, but only as aids to the memory
and understanding of the court. Gray's opinion went on to say,
quote Botanically speaking, tomatoes are the fruit of the vine,
just as are cucumbers, squashes, beans, and peas. But in
(28:32):
the common language of the people, whether cellars or consumers
of provisions, all these are vegetables which are grown in
kitchen gardens, in which whether eaten, cooked or raw, are
like potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets, cauliflower, cabbage, celery, and lettuce,
usually served at dinner in with or after the soup,
(28:54):
fish or meats, which constitute the principal part of the repast,
and not like fruits generally as dessert. The opinion concluded quote,
the attempt to class tomatoes as fruit is not unlike
a recent attempt to class beans as seeds, of which
mister Justice Bradley, speaking for this Court, said, we do
(29:15):
not see why they should be classified as seeds anymore
than walnuts should be so classified. Both are seeds in
the language of botany or natural history, but not in
commerce nor in common parlance. On the other hand, in
speaking generally of provisions, beans may well be included under
the term vegetables as an article of food on our tables,
(29:38):
whether baked or boiled, or forming the basis of soup.
They are used as a vegetable as well when ripe
as when green. This is the principal use to which
they are put. Beyond the common knowledge which we have
on this subject, very little evidence is necessary or can
be produced. With that the Supreme Court affirmed the lower
(29:59):
Court's judgem so and the Supreme Court's viewed tomatoes are vegetables,
at least for the purpose of the tariff. That same day,
the Supreme Court also issued its decision in Hollander versus Magone,
which was similarly about the meaning of words in the
context of the tariff law. Specifically, that question was whether
(30:19):
beer was liquor. Hollander and Company had paid a tariff
on some imported beer that had soured in transit. The
law did not allow the tariff to be waived on
liquors that had been damaged during shipping. Hollander's attorney argued
that this clause did not apply because this was beer,
not liquor. The court noted that the word liquor was
often used to mean an intoxicating beverage that had been distilled,
(30:43):
not one that was simply fermented, but that in the
context and placement of this term in the tariff law,
it was clearly meant to incorporate other intoxicating beverages, not
just distilled ones. Nicks versus Headnt has been cited in
more than fifty other state and federal court decisions since
eighteen ninety three, and a lot of them have to
(31:05):
do with the meanings of words, like whether a dog
rescue operation.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Was a kennel. If it was a kennel, it would
be in violation of zoning laws. That was in Coal
versus New Siwickly Township Zoning Hearing Board No said the
court dog rescues are not kennels or in United States
versus Peddix on whether bitcoins or money. Again no, because
(31:33):
in the common language of the people, money is government issued,
regulated dollars or things connected directly to dollars, like credit
cards or money orders. This decision was controversial because other
earlier decisions and at least one subsequent one, decided the opposite.
Or in Robinson versus Liberty Mutual Insurance Company on whether
(31:56):
an exclusion for property damage caused by insects and vermin
applied to spiders since spiders are aracnids and not insects. Yes,
the court ruled the exclusion did apply. We know that
spiders are technically iracnids, but clearly this provision applied to
(32:18):
them as well.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Should have just said bugs. Nicks versus Headen has also
been cited in broader discussions in the context of whether
dictionary definitions are evidence or if their aids to the court.
There are also many other cases that hinge on what
words mean that do not cite Nicks versus Headen. We'll
(32:39):
talk about a few of those on Friday, since they're
not directly connected to this one. Also, the terms ordinary meaning,
plain meaning, and common use. All of those show up
in legal arguments related to those ideas, and sometimes those
have slightly different meanings. In two thousand and five, New
Jersey chose the tomato as its state and vendegetable after
(33:00):
a group of fourth graders cited Nicks versus Headen in
a campaign for the tomato to be included among the choices.
The tomato is the state fruit in Ohio and Tennessee,
and in Arkansas, the South Arkansas vine right pink tomato
is both the state fruit and the state vegetable. Although
(33:22):
the act making this designation doesn't specifically cite Nicks versus Headen,
it does note that quote the tomato is botanically a
fruit and used as a vegetable.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Do you have delicious listener mail? I do I have
listener mail? That is from Jordan. Jordan's email is titled
Scott Joplin the Texarcana Native, but not really, and Jordan
wrote height Tracy Holly as someone who was born and
raised in Texarcana, I'm from the Texas side. Very important distinction.
(33:56):
I love your episode on Scott Joplin. He's arguably the
most influential person from techs Arcana who's not from techs Arcana.
I distinctly remember growing up that anytime someone tried to
choose him as a subject of a history or research paper,
they usually had to switch topics or pivot to something
like the general history of ragtime, simply for the lack
(34:17):
of source material to meet the grading requirements. I loved
hearing all these new details about a figure whose face
I've seen all my life on a mural downtown. I
moved away almost fifteen years ago, but this episode happened
to come out the week before I went home to
see some friends. While I was in town, I went
to go take some pictures of that mural and was
(34:37):
pleased to find it had a major facelift. I've attached
some pictures. The mural was done by Art Pletcher with
surface bred by CD Little. It's located on the back
of the Texarkana Regional Arts and Humanities Council or the
Track building at the corner of Main Street and West Third.
It's also across from the historic pro Theater. As a
(34:58):
railroad town that seems some of its highs and lows,
this is now a lovely selection of historic downtown that
is recently being revived, and it was really cool to see,
if not for the episode, I wouldn't have taken the
time to go down and explore the area, so per usual.
Thank you so much for your work. You provide me
with an endless supply of did you know facts that
(35:18):
makes me sound much more well read than I actually am.
Also provided a pet tax of my parents' dog, Striker.
He's very anxious, very sweet border Collie born during the pandemic,
so this is him emotionally exhausted after the family my
parents so said for the holidays had finally left. Thanks again,
Jordan inadvertently didn't send the dog picture and sent that
(35:41):
as a follow up, very cute, so sweet. I'm going
to say I did not look up the how to
pronounce pero theater, and it would not shock me to
learn that maybe it's per rot, because that seems like
the kind of word that maybe would have a different
local pronunciation than the one that is zixpected. Uh, yeah,
(36:02):
I don't I don't remember what word there was a
proper name on the show within the last year that
like had an extremely straightforward spelling and h like an
English Language definition standard pronunciation that I looked up as
(36:23):
a joke, like better make sure they don't say it
differently there haha. And it turned out they did, and
I was like, well, well, I wish I could remember
now which term it was. I don't remember anyway, this
is a beautiful mural. It's it's got Scott Joplin's face
to his father of rag Time on it. Uh. And
(36:45):
then there's one that's got like a lot of sheet
music covers for the entertainer, the santhemum pineapple rag trem
nisia maple leaf rag. It's very lovely. I like this
mural a whole lot, and if I were in tech sarcana,
I would go have a look at it. So thank
you so much Jordan for sending this to us.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
If you would like to send us a note about
this or any other podcast, we're at History Podcasts at
iHeartRadio dot com and we're all over social media at
miss in History. That's were you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,
and Instagram, and you can subscribe to our show on
the iHeartMedia app wherever I do you like to get
your podcasts. Stuff you missed in History Class is a
(37:33):
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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