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Sec. 8.--Powers of Congress

Cl. 3.-Commerce-Interstate

by freight, held interstate business though such dealer is a citizen of Kansas.

Kirmeyer v. Kansas, 236 U. S. 568.

See also

Ware & Leland v. Mobile County, 209 U. S. 405.
Banker Bros. v. Pennsylvania, 222 U. S. 210.
Purity Extract, etc., Co. v. Lynch, 226 U. S. 192.
Adams Exp. Co. v. Commonwealth, 206 U. S. 129.

Commerce Carried on by Corporations

The grant of power is general in its terms, making no reference to the agencies by which commerce may be carried on. It includes commerce by whomsoever conducted, whether by individuals or by corporations.

Gloucester Ferry Co. v. Pennsylvania, 114 U. S. 204.

Paul v. Virginia, 8 Wall. 182.

In Crutcher v. Kentucky, 141 U. S. 57, the court said:

To carry on interstate commerce is not a franchise or a privilege granted by the State; it is a right which every citizen of the United States is entitled to exercise under the Constitution and laws of the United States; and the accession of mere corporate facilities as a matter of convenience in carrying on their business can not have the effect of depriving them of such right unless Congress should see fit to interpose some contrary regulation on the subject.

Congress has visitatorial power over State corporations in the exercise of its power to regulate interstate commerce.

I. C. C. v. Goodrich Transit Co., 224 U. S. 194.

Transportation of Persons and Property

In general. The transportation of persons and goods between different States is interstate commerce; freight carried from a point without the State to some point within the State, and freight carried from some point within that State to other States, is as much commerce among the States as that which passes entirely through a State.

Philadelphia, etc., S. S. Co. v. Pennsylvania, 122 U. S. 326.
Fargo v. Michigan, 121 U. S. 238.

The transportation of live stock from State to State is a branch of interstate commerce, and any specified rule or regulation in respect of such transportation, which Congress may lawfully prescribe or authorize and which may properly be deemed a regulation of such commerce, is paramount throughout the Union.

Reid v. Colorado, 187 U. S. 146.

The power to regulate or forbid the sale of a commodity after it has been brought into the State does not carry with it the right and power to prevent its introduction by transportation from another State.

Bowman v. Chicago, etc., R. Co., 125 U. S. 465.

Sec. 8.-Powers of Congress

Cl. 3.-Commerce-Interstate

The transportation of oil in pipe lines from one State to another is interstate commerce, and this is so though the oil transported belongs to the owner of the pipe lines, and is subject to the regulating power of Congress when the owner of the lines refuses to transport for others but purchases the oil from the producers and thus controls the business in the territory served by the lines.

Pipe Line Cases, 234 U. S. 548.

Eureka Pipe Line Co. v. Hallanan, 257 U. S. 265.

United Fuel Gas Co. v. Hallanan, 257 U. S. 277.

Street cars over interstate bridge. The transportation of persons in street cars upon continuous and connecting tracks across a bridge between two States is interstate commerce.

South Covington, etc., R. Co. v. Covington, 235 U. S. 537.

State carriers forming interstate route.-Any carriage of goods which crosses a State line is interstate commerce; and the fact that transportation from one State to another is accomplished in whole or in part through the agency of independent and unrelated carriers up to and from the State line does not affect the character of the transaction in this respect. For whenever an article destined to a place without the State is shipped or started therefor, it becomes the subject of interstate commerce, and the carriers employed in the transportation thereof, although neither of them pass from one State to the other, are subject, as instruments of such commerce, to national legislation and control. A steamer plying between two points within a State is engaged in interstate commerce so far as she is employed in transporting goods destined for other States.

Ex parte Koehler, 30 Fed. 867.

Norfolk, etc., R. Co. v. Pennsylvania, 136 U. S. 114.
The Daniel Ball, 10 Wall. 557.

Local part of interstate shipment.-Where an interstate carload shipment is billed on a through bill of lading, with draft attached, to a certain point, and the through bill is exchanged by the consignee for another bill consigning the same car to his own order at another point in the same State, and the circumstances show that the interstate shipment should not terminate at first point to which the car was billed, but that it should move on as the result of such direction as might be given while it was in transit by the consignee, the local part of the transportation formed part of the whole interstate transaction.

Atchison, etc., R. Co. v. Harold, 241 U. S. 371.

Baltimore, etc., R. Co. v. Settle, 260 U. S. 166.

Railroads which share in an agreed rate on traffic to a certain point, and in a precisely equal rate on traffic to an intermediate point, although on traffic to this point there is added an amount equal to the local rate from that point to the end of the longer

Sec. 8.-Powers of Congress

Cl. 3.-Commerce-Interstate

haul, which additional exaction is received by the local road alone, are to be regarded as constituting a continuous line, subject to the act to regulate commerce.

Louisville, etc., R. Co. v. Behlmer, 175 U. S. 648.

Separable part of interstate haul.-Where there has been an interstate shipment, and the shipper has instructed the terminal carrier to deliver the shipment to another carrier for transportation to another point within the same State, the last separable part of the journey is not an interstate one, notwithstanding it had been the purpose of the shipper to reship from the original terminal point.

Gulf, etc., R. Co. v. Texas, 204 U. S. 403.

Route between points within a State passing through adjoining State.-Transportation between two points in a State, when a large part of the route is on a loop outside the State, is interstate commerce, and the action of the State commission fixing the rates for continuous transportation over such route is invalid.

Hanley v. Kansas City, etc., R. Co., 187 U. S. 619.
Sternberger v. Cape Fear, etc., R. Co., 7 S. E. 836.
State v. Chicago, etc., R. Co., 41 N. W. 1047.

The mere passage over the soil of another State in the carriage of freight and passengers between two points in one State does not render that business foreign which is domestic, and State taxation on receipts for such transportation is not open to constitutional objection.

Lehigh Valley R. Co. v. Pennsylvania, 145 U. S. 202.

See Hanley v. Kansas City, etc., R. Co., supra, in which the court said that the Lehigh Valley case was one of a tax and was distinguished expressly from an attempt by a State directly to regulate the transportation while outside its borders.

See also Ewing v. Leavenworth (226 U. S. 464), as to an ordinance imposing a tax on the business of express companies, as applied to shipments between two points within the State, passing over the territory of an adjoining State.

Moving goods from platform to freight warehouse.-Moving goods shipped from a point without the State, from a platform at the depot to the freight warehouse, is a part of interstate transportation.

Rhodes v. Iowa, 170 U. S. 412.

Accommodations for passengers of different races.-Whether interstate passengers of one race should, in any portion of their journey, be compelled to share their cabin accommodations with

See also "Race distinctions," under Amendment 14, p. 725.

Sec. 8.-Powers of Congress

Cl. 3.-Commerce-Interstate

passengers of another racei s a question of interstate commerce
and to be determined by Congress alone.

Louisville, etc., R. Co. v. Mississippi, 133 U. S. 590.
McCabe v. Atchison, etc., R. Co., 235 U. S. 151.
Chesapeake, etc., R. Co. v. Kentucky, 179 U. S. 388.

In Chiles v. Chesapeake, etc., R. Co. (218 U. S. 71), in which a colored passenger riding on a through ticket from Washington, D. C., to Lexington, Ky., was required by the railway company, when he changed trains at Ashland, Ky., to go into a car set apart exclusively for colored people, the State requiring all railroads to provide separate accommodations for white and colored passengers, the railroad company contended that it had not acted under the State statute but had adopted the regulation under its common-law right to make reasonable regulations for the conduct of its business, and the court declined to pass upon the validity of the statute and held that the common-law rule allowing railroads to make reasonable regulations were not a burdensome regulation of interstate commerce. The court further held that the regulation in question was a reasonable one for the company to make.

In Hall v. De Cuir (95 U. S. 485), the court held that a statute of Louisiana requiring interstate carriers to permit negroes and whites to intermingle freely among each other in all parts of their trains or boats was invalid.

As was said by Chaplin, in his Principles of the Federal Law (sec. 182):

Mere classification of persons, by race or color, not being in and of itself violative of equal protection of the laws, Congress has, in the field of suprastate commerce, power of such classification. A State has no power to this effect in suprastate commerce but the matter is of exclusive congressional competency. Congress, if not having taken affirmative action in this field, leaves the matter to be governed by the common-law principles governing common carriers-that is to say, leaves carriers free, in suprastate transit, to make such classification or not, at their pleasure.

In South Covington, etc., R. Co. v. Kentucky (252 U. S. 399), it was held that a State law requiring interurban railroad companies to supply separate accommodations for white and colored passengers, and punishing failure to do so, was not an unconstitutional burden on interstate commerce as applied to such railroads.

Use of local rates or bills of lading as between connecting carriers.-When goods shipped under a through bill of lading from a point in one State to a point in another are received in transit by a State common carrier, under a conventional division of the charges such carrier must be deemed to have subjected its road to an arrangement for a continuous carriage or shipment within the meaning of the act to regulate commerce. Cincinnati, etc., R. Co. v. I. C. C., 162 U. S. 193. Baer Bros. v. Denver, etc., R. Co., 233 U. S. 479.

Sec. 8.-Powers of Congress

Communication by Telegraph and Telephone

Cl. 3.-Commerce-Interstate

Communication by telegraph is commerce, as well as in the nature of postal service, and if carried on between different States it is interstate commerce and directly within the power of regulation conferred upon Congress and free from the control of State regulations, except such as are strictly of a police

character.

Leloup v. Mobile, 127 U. S. 645.

Western Union v. Commercial Milling Co., 218 U. S. 406.
Western Union v. James, 162 U. S. 654.

Western Union v. Alabama, 132 U. S. 473.

Western Union v. Pendleton, 122 U. S. 356.

Pensacola Tel. Co. v. Western Union, 96 U. S. 9.

A telegraph company occupies the same relation to commerce as a carrier of messages that a railroad company does as a carrier of goods. Both companies are instruments of commerce and their business is commerce itself. A State can not prevent an interstate telegraph company from doing business in it. A statute of Texas provided that every chartered telegraph company doing business in that State should pay a tax for every message sent. The validity of this law was sustained by the Supreme Court of Texas, but the Supreme Court of the United States reversed that judgment and held the act unconstitutional "so far as it included the tax on messages sent out of the State for the Government on public business." But that portion of the statute which levied a tax on messages sent by private parties and not by the agents of the Government from one place to another within the State was held to be constitutional.

Telegraph Co. v. Texas, 105 U. S. 461 (reversing 55 Tex. 314).

The rules applicable to telegraph companies apply alike to telephone companies. When their lines run from one State into another they are carriers of interstate commerce.

Delaware, etc., Co. v. Delaware, 50 Fed. 677.
Muskogee Nat. Tel. Co. v. Hall, 118 Fed. 382.
Central Union Tel. Co. v. State, 19 N. E. 604.

But see Richmond v. Telephone Co. (174 U. S. 777), in which the court said:

If Congress desires to extend the provisions of the act of 1866 to companies engaged in the business of electrically transmitting articulate speech-that is, to companies popularly known as telephone companies, and never otherwise designated in common speech-let it do so in plain words. It will be time enough when such legislation is enacted to consider any questions of constitutional law that may be suggested by it.

New York stock quotations furnished by telegraph to subscribers in Massachusetts held interstate commerce.

Western Union v. Foster, 247 U. S. 105.

In 1910, by amendment to the act to regulate commerce, the jurisdiction of the commission was extended to telegraph and

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