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of cars. The most recent illustration of this policy is found in section 17, act April 19, 1907 (Acts 1907, p. 463). For one railroad company to be an Ishmaelite among its associates would operate disastrously to its shippers. The shippers of Arkansas expect the public carriers to put their cotton to the spinners in New England, and their fruits to the North, and their lumber and coal to the four quarters of the Union, without change from consignor to consignee."

Thus deciding that the mere delivery of cars for through transportation was not a factor in determining whether there was legal fault, the court came to consider whether there was anything in the arrangement by which the cars in question were permitted to go off the line, which in and of itself constituted fault and consequent responsibility for failure to furnish all the cars required in time of shortage. Reviewing the evidence on this subject it was found that the company was a member of an association known as the American Railway Association, which had adopted rules governing the interchange of cars from one road to another, with provisions for the return thereof and for compensation therefor, the association embracing and its rutes governing ninety per cent of the railroads of the United States. Fixing thus the system which controlled the company in the interchange of its cars it was determined that the mer formation of an association for such purpose was not rep nant to the laws against combinations in restraint of trade, the court, after referring to various state decisions to that effect, saying:

"The result of these and other decisions, as summed up in an excellent text-book, is that these associations are lawful, and their rules and regulations, when reasonable, will be upheld. 2 Hutchinson on Carriers 3d ed.), § 861 Mr. Elliott says that such associations, formed for the purpose of making and enforcing reasonable regulations to facilitate business and secure the prompt loading, unloading, and return of cars, cannot be held illegal, upon the ground that the constituent companies by becoming members surrender their corporate

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functions and control to the association. 4 Elliott on Railroads, 1568."

Having thus sustained the right of the road to deliver its cars for the purpose of continuous transportation beyond its line in interstate commerce, and sanctioned the general method by which it was sought to regulate and control the transmission and return of such cars, that is, by membership in the American Railway Association, the nature and character of the rules of the association were considered. Without going into detail or following the statements of the court on the subject it suffices to say that, analyzing the rules of the association the court concluded that the regulations were inefficient in many respects, did not provide sufficient penalties to secure the prompt return of cars by roads which might receive the same, but on the contrary afforded a temptation in time of car shortage, inducing a road having the cars of another road to retain and use them, paying the penalty, as to do so would afford it an advantage. Pointing out that the general result of the operation of the rules of the American Railway Association for the interchange of cars had proven ineffective in the past, it was held that the company was at fault for delivering its cars to other roads for the movement of interstate commerce subject to the regulations of the American Railway Association, and therefore the penalty imposed in the judgment was rightly assessed.

As the penalty, which the court sustained, was enforced solely because of its conclusion as to the inefficiency of the rules and regulations of the American Railway Association, which governed ninety per cent of the railroads in the United States, the court was evidently not unmindful that the carrier before it was powerless of its own motion to change the rules thus generally prevailing, and therefore was necessarily either compelled to desist from the interchange of cars with connecting carriers for the purpose of the movement of interstate commerce, or to conduct such business with the certainty of being subjected to the penalties which the state statute pro

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vided for. We say this, since the court said (85 Arkansas, 322): "It may be better for the appellant to suffer these ills than to sail under a black flag, and refuse to send its cars beyond its line; that is not a question for the court. Until the appellant carrier shows reasonable rules and regulations for the interchange of cars, it cannot avail itself of these rules of interchange as causing and excusing its default to the public, for the rules here shown have proved unreasonable and inefficient before this default occurred." And the gravity of the ban on interstate commerce which it was thus recognized would result from the ruling made cannot be more vividly portrayed than by once again quoting the statement of the court on the subject, saying: "For one railroad company to be an Ishmaelite among its associates would be disastrous to its shippers." If the railroad company, compelled to be a law unto itself because of its inability to change by its own isolated will the rules of the American Railway Association, should prefer to subject itself to the penalties inflicted by the state statute rather than bring disaster to its shippers, the seriousness of the burden to which interstate commerce would be subjected, cannot be better illustrated than by saying that by the provisions of the state statute, the penalty upon the carrier for each violation of the act or of the rules and regulations of the commission was not less than five hundred nor more than three thousand dollars.

When, by thus following the careful analysis made by the court below, the contentions which the case present are circumscribed and the issues to which all the controversies are reducible are accurately defined, we think no serious difficulty is involved in their solution. In the first place, it is suggested by the defendant in error that no Federal question arises for decision, and, therefore, the writ of error should be dismissed. This rests upon the theory that, as the court below put the rule of the commission, No. 305, out of view and declared in its statement of the case that no extraordinary or unusual rush of business on the line of the defendant com

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pany occasioned the car shortage, therefore no ground of Federal cognizance remained, as, in other respects, the action of the court below was, in effect, placed purely upon matters of local concern broad enough to sustain its judgment. The contention is plainly without merit. It is to be conceded that the ruling of the court as to the irrelevancy of the rule adopted by the commission eliminates from consideration so much of the answer and of the instructions asked by the company and refused, relating to the repugnancy of the order to the commerce clause of the Constitution, both on account of its inherent operation and because of unreasonable provisions, which, it was alleged, it contained. But the constitutional defenses which were asserted by the answer, and which were embraced in the instructions asked and refused, were not confined to the mere order as such, but plainly challenged the power of the State to inflict the penalty for the failure to furnish the cars under the circumstances disclosed by the answer. And the ruling of the court, that the asserted power arose from the statute instead of from the rule adopted by the commission, but changed the form without in any way minimizing or obscuring the completeness of the Federal defense which was made in the pleading and necessarily passed upon by the court below.

Coming to the merits, we think it needs but statement to demonstrate that the ruling of the court below involved necessarily the assertion of power in the State to absolutely forbid the efficacious carrying on of interstate commerce, or, what is equivalent thereto, to cause the right to efficiently conduct such commerce to depend upon the willingness of the company to be subjected to enormous pecuniary penalties as a condition of the exercise of the right. It is to be observed that there is no question here of a regulation of a State forbidding an unequal distribution of cars by a carrier for the benefit of interstate to the detriment of local commerce. This is the clear result of the finding below as to the proportion of the originating traffic of the road and the extent of

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the cars retained and those permitted to go beyond the line of the road for the purposes of interstate commerce. If it be that the court below was right in its assumption that the rules of the American Railway Association, governing, as was conceded by the court, ninety per cent of the railroads and hence a vast proportion of the interstate commerce of the country, are inefficient to secure just dealing as to cars moved by the carriers engaged in interstate commerce, that fact affords no ground for conceding that such subject was within the final cognizance of the court below and could by it be made the basis of prohibiting interstate commerce or unlawfully burdening the right to carry it on. In the nature of things, as the rules and regulations of the association concern matters of interstate commerce inherently within Federal control, the power to determine their sufficiency we think was primarily vested in the body upon whom Congress has conferred authority in that regard.

The judgment of the Supreme Court of the State of Arkansas is reversed, and the case remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE FULLER dissents.

TODD v. ROMEU.

APPEAL FROM THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR PORTO RICO.

No. 408. Submitted January 10, 1910.-Decided April 4, 1910.

In Porto Rico a cautionary notice must be filed in accordance with the local law in order to render an innocent third party liable to dismembership of ownership by reason of purchase during pendency of a suit to set aside a simulated sale. Romeu v. Todd, 206 U. S. 358. The right to file a cautionary notice in Porto Rico under the existing mortgage law is not absolute in all cases; in certain classes of cases

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