going opinion and action, proceeded to issue a preliminary injunction as prayed in the bill. 216 Fed. Rep. 413.

An appeal was taken to this court in 1914. In 1915 the Act of 1913 was repealed, and the substituted act does not apply to the plaintiff. Supplemental Supplement to the Code of Iowa, 1915, c. 19-B, § 2600-s1. All possibility or threat of the operation has disappeared now, if not before, by the act of the State. Therefore upon the precedents we are not called upon to consider the propriety of the action of the District Court, but the proper course is to reverse the decree and remand the cause with directions that the bill be dismissed without costs to either party. United States v. Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien Gesellschaft, 239 U. S. 466, 475, 478; Jones v. Montague, 194 U. S. 147, 153; Dinsmore v. Southern Express Co., 183 U. S. 115, 120; Mills v. Green, 159 U. S. 651, 658.

Decree reversed. Bill to be dismissed without costs to either party.

CAMINETTI v. UNITED STATES.

DIGGS v. UNITED STATES.

CERTIORARI TO THE CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT.

HAYS v. UNITED STATES.

CERTIORARI TO THE CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT.

Nos. 139, 163, 464. Argued November 13, 14, 1916.-Decided January 15, 1917.

The White Slave Traffic Act of June 25, 1910, c. 395, 36 Stat. 825, applies to any case in which a woman is transported in interstate commerce for the purpose of prostitution or concubinage; pecuniary

gain, either as a motive for the transportation or as an attendant of its object, is not an element in the offenses defined.

As so read the act is constitutional.

When the language of a statute is plain and does not lead to absurd or impracticable results, there is no occasion or excuse for judicial construction; the language must then be accepted by the courts as the sole evidence of the ultimate legislative intent, and the courts have no function but to apply and enforce the statute accordingly. Statutory words are presumed, unless the contrary appears, to be used in their ordinary sense, with the meaning commonly attributed to them.

When an act provides that it shall be known and referred to by a designated name, the name can not be made the means of overriding the plain meaning of its other provisions.

The reports of congressional committees may be resorted to by the courts when the legislation to which they relate is doubtful and requires interpretation.

The meaning which this court had attributed to the words "any other immoral purpose" as used in the act concerning the importation of alien women, Act of February 20, 1907, c. 1134, 34 Stat. 898, 899, Congress must be presumed to have known when it employed the same words in a similar association in the White Slave Traffic Act. The power of Congress under the commerce clause, including as it does authority to regulate the interstate transportation of passengers and to keep the channels of interstate commerce free from immoral and injurious uses, enables it to forbid the interstate transportation of women and girls for the immoral purposes of which the petitioners were convicted in these cases.

When an accused person voluntarily testifies in his own behalf and omits to deny or explain incriminating circumstances and events already in evidence in which he participated and concerning which he is fully informed, his silence subjects him to the inferences naturally to be drawn from it, and an instruction to that effect does not violate his rights under the Fifth Amendment or the Act of March 16, 1878, c. 37, 20 Stat. 30.

While it is the better practice in criminal cases for courts to caution juries against too much reliance on the testimony of accomplices and against believing such testimony without corroboration, mere failure to give such an instruction is not reversible error. 220 Fed. Rep. 545; 231 Fed. Rep. 106, affirmed.

THE cases are stated in the opinion.

Argument for Petitioner in No. 163.

242 U.S.

Mr. Joseph W. Bailey, with whom Mr. Marshall B. Woodworth and Mr. Robert T. Devlin were on the brief, for petitioner in No. 163:

It was error to charge the jury that they might draw inferences against the defendant Diggs, from his failure to deny or explain incriminating acts in evidence. Constitution, Article V; Act of March 15, 1878, c. 37, 20 Stat. 30; Balliet v. United States, 129 Fed. Rep. 689, 696; Myrick v. United States and Cunningham v. United States, 219 Fed. Rep. 1; Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616. In the United States courts and in the courts of some of the States, independently of statute, and especially in California, the right of cross-examination is restricted to matters inquired of in chief. Where a defendant does not go into a subject, but leaves it as the prosecution left it, the case as made against him derives no support from his silence. The fact, therefore, that defendant went upon the stand in this case did not justify the instructions complained of.

The practical effect was erroneously to contradict the presumption of innocence and shift the burden of proof.

The evidence authorized the jury to conclude that the women were accomplices. Cyc., vol. 12, pp. 447, 448, and cases cited; People v. Coffey, 161 California, 433, 447; United States v. Holte, 236 U. S. 140. It was the duty of the trial court to submit that question and to caution the jury. Cyc., vol. 12, p. 453; Crawford v. United States, 212 U. S. 183, 204, and numerous other cases. A refusal so to instruct is ground for reversal. Solander v. People, 2 Colorado, 48; Cheatham v. State, 67 Mississippi, 335; People v. Sternberg, 111 California, 11; People v. Strybe, 36 Pac. Rep. 3; People v. Bonney, 98 California, 278; Penal Code of California, § 1111; Martin v. State, 36 S. W. Rep. 587; Cyc., vol. 12, pp. 458, 459, and cases cited.

The issue should have been confined to the specific allegation of purpose, viz., that the woman was to become the defendant's concubine or mistress, which controls the

242 U. S.

Argument for Petitioner in No. 163.

general terms "debauchery" and "other immoral purposes," in the indictment. For the meaning of "debauchery" see State v. Reeves, 97 Missouri, 668; Suslak v. United States, 213 Fed. Rep. 913, 917; Athanasaw v. United States, 227 U. S. 326. It is unnecessary for us to particularize the many indecent practices that come under the head of "debauchery" and "other immoral practices." It was for the purpose of reaching these that the act was passed.

See: "The Battle with the Slums," pp. 69-75, by Jacob A. Riis, N. Y., The Macmillan Company, 1902. The case should be reversed for introduction of improper evidence and misconduct of counsel at the trial.

The trial court erred in compelling the defendant on cross-examination to go beyond his direct examination.

The White Slave Traffic Act is unconstitutional if extended to cases where no element of profit exists. New York v. Miln, 11 Pet. 102; License Cases, 5 How. 599; Bowman v. Chicago &c. R. Co., 125 U. S. 489; Lemon v. People, 26 Barbour (N. Y.), 270, affirmed in 20 N. Y. 562; Welton v. Missouri, 91 U. S. 275; Hall v. DeCuir, 95 U. S. 485; Weber v. Virginia, 103 U. S. 344; Passenger Cases, 7 How. 283; King v. American Transportation Co., 14 Fed. Cases, 512; Boyse v. Anderson, 2 Pet. 150. All cases heretofore upholding the law have involved actual traffic in women for gain. This traffic, as the court knows judicially, became so menacing that a conference of nations was convened at Paris, July 25, 1902, to concert measures of suppression. The resulting agreement was proclaimed by the President June 18, 1908, 35 Stat. pt. 2, 1979-1984. This the act of Congress was intended to effectuate. The nature of the white slave traffic and the meanings of the term are generally and judicially known. See New Standard Dictionary; United States v. Hoke, 187 Fed. Rep. 992, 1002. The court should take cognizance of the evil aimed at by the act. The Paris agreement, the proclamation, the

Argument for Petitioner in No. 139.

242 U. S.

act itself in the title and §§ 6 and 8, and the committee's report all demonstrate that commercial traffic alone was in view. Commerce in the Constitution implies traffic and gain. Congress cannot regulate morals and thus usurp the state police power by forbidding the mere passage or transportation of passengers.

The following is a condensation of Mr. Bailey's petition for rehearing in the Caminetti Case.

The White Slave Traffic Act does not apply to the uncontested facts of this case. The question here is whether the purpose of Caminetti, being free from every element of coercion and commercialism, is within the prohibition of the statute. It is a question of classification, rather than of words. An act might be clearly within the language of a statute directed against voluntary vice, and yet that identical act would not be within precisely the same words in a statute directed against involuntary vice. Before we can decide whether a particular act is within the words of a statute, we must first decide whether the class of acts to which the particular act belongs is within the purpose of the statute. This principle of construction was sanctioned by this court in Holy Trinity Church v. United States, 143 U. S. 457, and the rule there announced has been received by the bench and bar as the law of the land for more than twenty years. In that case the court held that although the contract of employment was within the letter of the law, emphasized by particular expression, as well as by certain exceptions, Congress intended only to legislate against the importation of manual laborers under contract, and intellectual laborers were not within the statute. Here we say that Congress intended to legislate only against commercialized vice, and no conduct, however immoral, which is free from coercion and commercialism, is within the statute.