277 Opinion of the Court. United States attorney, to give the suspect an "opportunity to present his views." We agree with the Circuit Court of Appeals that the giving of such an opportunity, which was not accorded to Dotterweich, is not a prerequisite to prosecution. This Court so held in United States v. Morgan, 222 U. S. 274, in construing the Food and Drugs Act of 1906, 34 Stat. 768, and the legislative history to which the court below called attention abundantly proves that Congress, in the changed phraseology of 1938, did not intend to introduce a change of substance. 83 Cong. Rec. 7792-94. Equally baseless is the claim of Dotterweich that, having failed to find the corporation guilty, the jury could not find him guilty. Whether the jury's verdict was the result of carelessness or compromise or a belief that the responsible individual should suffer the penalty instead of merely increasing, as it were, the cost of running the business of the corporation, is immaterial. Juries may indulge in precisely such motives or vagaries. Dunn v. United States, 284 U. S. 390. And so we are brought to our real problem. The Circuit Court of Appeals, one judge dissenting, reversed the conviction on the ground that only the corporation was the "person" subject to prosecution unless, perchance, Buffalo Pharmacal was a counterfeit corporation serving as a screen for Dotterweich. On that issue, after rehearing, it remanded the cause for a new trial. We then brought the case here, on the Government's petition for certiorari, 318 U. S. 753, because this construction raised questions of importance in the enforcement of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. The court below drew its conclusion not from the provisions defining the offenses on which this prosecution was based (§§ 301 (a) and 303 (a)), but from the terms of § 303 (c). That section affords immunity from prosecution if certain conditions are satisfied. The condition relevant to this case is a guaranty from the seller of the innocence of Opinion of the Court. 320 U.S. his product. So far as here relevant, the provision for an immunizing guaranty is as follows: "No person shall be subject to the penalties of subsection (a) of this section . . . (2) for having violated section 301 (a) or (d), if he establishes a guaranty or undertaking signed by, and containing the name and address of, the person residing in the United States from whom he received in good faith the article, to the effect, in case of an alleged violation of section 301 (a), that such article is not adulterated or misbranded, within the meaning of this Act, designating this Act . . ." The Circuit Court of Appeals found it "difficult to believe that Congress expected anyone except the principal to get such a guaranty, or to make the guilt of an agent depend upon whether his employer had gotten one." 131 F.2d 500, 503. And so it cut down the scope of the penalizing provisions of the Act to the restrictive view, as a matter of language and policy, it took of the relieving effect of a guaranty. The guaranty clause cannot be read in isolation. The Food and Drugs Act of 1906 was an exertion by Congress of its power to keep impure and adulterated food and drugs out of the channels of commerce. By the Act of 1938, Congress extended the range of its control over illicit and noxious articles and stiffened the penalties for disobedience. The purposes of this legislation thus touch phases of the lives and health of people which, in the circumstances of modern industrialism, are largely beyond self-protection. Regard for these purposes should infuse construction of the legislation if it is to be treated as a working instrument of government and not merely as a collection of English words. See Hipolite Egg Co. v. United States, 220 U. S. 45, 57, and McDermott v. Wisconsin, 228 U. S. 115, 128. The prosecution to which Dotterweich was subjected is based on a now familiar type of legislation whereby penalties serve as effective means 277 Opinion of the Court. of regulation. Such legislation dispenses with the conventional requirement for criminal conduct-awareness of some wrongdoing. In the interest of the larger good it puts the burden of acting at hazard upon a person otherwise innocent but standing in responsible relation to a public danger. United States v. Balint, 258 U. S. 250. And so it is clear that shipments like those now in issue are "punished by the statute if the article is misbranded [or adulterated], and that the article may be misbranded [or adulterated] without any conscious fraud at all. It was natural enough to throw this risk on shippers with regard to the identity of their wares. . ." United States v. Johnson, 221 U. S. 488, 497-98. The statute makes "any person" who violates § 301 (a) guilty of a "misdemeanor." It specifically defines "person" to include "corporation." § 201 (e). But the only way in which a corporation can act is through the individuals who act on its behalf. New York Central & H. R. R. Co. v. United States, 212 U. S. 481. And the historic conception of a "misdemeanor" makes all those responsible for it equally guilty, United States v. Mills, 7 Pet. 138, 141, a doctrine given general application in § 332 of the Penal Code (18 U. S. C. § 550). If, then, Dotterweich is not subject to the Act, it must be solely on the ground that individuals are immune when the "person" who violates § 301 (a) is a corporation, although from the point of view of action the individuals are the corporation. As a matter of legal development, it has taken time to establish criminal liability also for a corporation and not merely for its agents. See New York Central & H. R. R. Co. v. United States, supra. The history of federal food and drug legislation is a good illustration of the elaborate phrasing that was in earlier days deemed necessary to fasten criminal liability on corporations. Section 12 of the Food and Drugs Act of 1906 provided that, "the act, omission, or failure of any officer, agent, or other person Opinion of the Court. 320 U.S. acting for or employed by any corporation, company, society, or association, within the scope of his employment or office, shall in every case be also deemed to be the act, omission, or failure of such corporation, company, society, or association as well as that of the person." By 1938, legal understanding and practice had rendered such statement of the obvious superfluous. Deletion of words-in the interest of brevity and good draftsmanship 1—superfluous for holding a corporation criminally liable can hardly be found ground for relieving from such liability the individual agents of the corporation. To hold that the Act of 1938 freed all individuals, except when proprietors, from the culpability under which the earlier legislation had placed them is to defeat the very object of the new Act. Nothing is clearer than that the later legislation was designed to enlarge and stiffen the penal net and not to narrow and loosen it. This purpose was unequivocally avowed by the two committees which reported the bills to the Congress. The House Committee reported that the Act "seeks to set up effective provisions against abuses of consumer welfare growing out of inadequacies in the Food and Drugs Act of June 30, 1906." (H. Rep. No. 2139, 75th Cong., 3d Sess., p. 1.) And the Senate Committee explicitly pointed out that the new legislation "must not weaken the existing laws," but on the contrary "it must strengthen and extend that law's protection of the consumer." (S. Rep. No. 152, 75th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 1.) If the 1938 Act were construed as it was below, the penalties of the law could be imposed only in the rare case where the corporation is merely an individual's alter ego. Corporations carrying on an illicit trade would be subject only to what the House Committee described as a "license fee 1 "The bill has been made shorter and less verbose than previous bills. That has been done without deleting any effective provisions." S. Rep. No. 152, 75th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 2. 277 Opinion of the Court. for the conduct of an illegitimate business." A corporate officer, who even with "intent to defraud or mislead" (§ 303b), introduced adulterated or misbranded drugs into interstate commerce could not be held culpable for conduct which was indubitably outlawed by the 1906 Act. See, e. g., United States v. Mayfield, 177 F. 765. This argument proves too much. It is not credible that Congress should by implication have exonerated what is probably a preponderant number of persons involved in acts of disobedience-for the number of non-corporate proprietors is relatively small. Congress, of course, could reverse the process and hold only the corporation and allow its agents to escape. In very exceptional circumstances it may have required this result. See Sherman v. United States, 282 U. S. 25. But the history of the present Act, its purposes, its terms, and extended practical construction lead away from such a result once "we free our minds from the notion that criminal statutes must be construed by some artificial and conventional rule." United States v. Union Supply Co., 215 U. S. 50, 55. The Act is concerned not with the proprietory relation to a misbranded or an adulterated drug but with its distribution. In the case of a corporation such distribution must be accomplished, and may be furthered, by persons standing in various relations to the incorporeal proprietor. If a guaranty immunizes shipments of course it immunizes all involved in the shipment. But simply because if there had been a guaranty it would have been received by the proprietor, whether corporate or individual, as a safeguard for the enterprise, the want of a guaranty 2 In describing the penalty provisions of § 303, the House Committee reported that the Bill "increases substantially the criminal penalties . . . which some manufacturers have regarded as substantially a license fee for the conduct of an illegitimate business." H. Rep. No. 2139, 75th Cong., 3d Sess., p. 4. |