race,

mentions the negro by speaking of his color and his slavery. But it is just as true that each of the other articles was addressed to the grievances of that and designed to remedy them as the fifteenth. We do not say that no one else but the negro can share in this protection. Both the language and spirit of these articles are to have their fair and just weight in any question of construction. Undoubtedly, while negro slavery alone was in the mind of the Congress which proposed the thirteenth article, it forbids any other kind of slavery, now or hereafter. If Mexican peonage, or the Chinese cooly labor system, shall develop slavery of the Mexican or Chinese race within our territory, this amendment may safely be trusted to make it void. And so if other rights are assailed by the States, which properly and necessarily fall within the protection of these articles, that protection will apply though the party interested may not be of African descent. But what we do say and what we wish to be understood is, that in any fair and just construction of any section or phrase of these amendments, it is necessary to look to the purpose which we have said was the pervading spirit of them all, the evil which they were designed to remedy, and the process of continued addition to the Constitution, until that purpose was supposed

to be accomplished as far as constitutional law can accomplish it.

The minority of the court took the ground that this act was, of itself, beyond the police powers of the Legislature, and therefore void, and also that it was void under the fourteenth amendment. This amendment, they said, makes it essential to the validity of the legislation of every State that the equality of right among citizens in the pursuit of ordinary vocations of life should be respected, and that all grants of exclusive privileges like the one question, in contravention of this equality, are against common right, and void.

A decision was also rendered in the case of Myra Bradwell against the State of Illinois. The plaintiff in error was refused a license to practise law by the Supreme Court of Illinois on the sole ground that she was a woman, and appealed from the decision to the Supreme Court of the United States. This court refused to set aside the decision of the Illinois court upon the ground that the right to be admitted to practise law in the limits of a State is not among the class of rights belonging to citizens of the United States, which the States are forbidden, by the fourteenth amendment, to abridge. The court held that the right to practise law does not depend upon citizenship at all, citing the fact that many distinguished lawyers have been admitted to practise, both in State and Federal courts, who were not citizens of the United States, or of any State. But if the claim of citizenship had any thing to do with the matter, the United States had only jurisdiction in regard to its own courts, and the separate States have full jurisdiction over the right to admission to their courts. The court therefore held that it could not interfere with the decision of the Supreme Court of Illinois, but uttered no opinion as to the right of women to practise in United States

courts.

A few conventions, claiming a national importance, were held during the year, such as

the Convention of Colored Citizens, at Washington; and the Convention to promote a Religious Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, at New York.

One of the most important subjects, however, which occupied the public attention, was that of cheap transportation, chiefly from the West to the East. The proceedings of conventions assembled to consider this subject in the several Western States will be found under the head of those States respectively; and also under the title "Patrons of Husbandry." The Convention of the Governors of the Southern States, which assembled at Atlanta, Georgia, is likewise noticed in the article on that State. The object of this convention was to consider a project for connecting, by an inland route, the waters of the Mississippi with the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic & Great Western Canal Company, in whose interest this convenconnect by canal and slack-water navigation tion was more particularly held, propose to the Coosa, Etowah, Ocmulgee, and Tennessee Rivers with the Atlantic Ocean at Savannah, Ga. The canal will commence at Guntersville, the most southern point reached by the Tennessee River, thence to the Coosa, thirty miles distant, which it enters, and follows to Rome, Ga., up to which point the Coosa River is navigable for large steamboats at all seasons of the year. From Rome the canal follows the Etowah River to its nearest point of contact with the Ocmulgee, and thence down the latter stream to navigable water and the Atlantic Ocean. This route has been several times surveyed, and has been declared entirely feasible by members of the United States Engineer Corps. The project was also favorably reported upon during the session of Congress of 1872-73. A report from the House Committee on Commerce says: "By this means the entire navigable waters of the States of Alabama, Eastern Mississippi, and West Florida, will be connected with the vast inland sea comprised in the term 'Mississippi River and its tributaries;' also the navigable waters of the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and a part of North Carolina, einbracing about 5,000 miles of water easily navigated by vessels of light draft, and upon canals. These vessels would penetrate the streams and estuaries above referred to, into almost every portion of these six States-States that produce the major portion of the cotton raised upon this continent."

A National Cheap Transportation Associa tion was organized in New York on May 6th. Delegates were present from many States and local associations. The views entertained by the convention are expressed in the following extracts from the platform adopted:

Whereas, The great material want of the nation to-day is relief from the present rates of transit upon American products: therefore

sion of this Association, is to obtain from Congress Resolved, 1.That the duty of the hour, and the misand the several State Legislatures such legislation as

2. That the cheap transportation, both of persons and property, being more conducive to the free movement of the people, and the widest interchange and consumption of the products of the different parts of the Union, are essential to the welfare and prosperity of the country.

3. That the constant and frequent association of the inhabitants of remote parts of the United States is not only desirable, but necessary, for the maintenance of a homogeneous and harmonious popula

tion within the vast area of our territory.

4. That the best interests of the different parts of the country also demand the freest possible interchange of the industrial products of the varied climates and industries of the United States, so that breadstuffs, textile fibres, coal, lumber, iron, sugar, and various other products, local in their production but general in their consumption, may all reach the consumer at the least practicable cost of transportation; and that an arbitrary and unnecessary tax levied by the transporter, over and above a fair remuneration for the investment, is a burden upon the producer and the consumer, that it is the part of wise statesmanship to remove.

5. That certain leading railway corporations of the country, although chartered to subserve the public welfare, and endowed with the right of eminent domain solely for that reason, have proved themselves practically monopolies, and become the tools of avaricious and unscrupulous capitalists, to be used to plunder the public, enrich themselves, and impoverish the country through which they run. 6. That many of the railway corporations of the United States have not only disregarded the public convenience and prosperity, but have oppressed the citizen, bribed our Legislatures, and defied our executives and judges, and stand to-day the most menacing danger to American liberty and to republican

government.

7. That the present system of railway management, having failed to meet the just expectations and demands of a long-suffering people, must be radically reformed and controlled by the strong hand of law, both State and national, and railway corporations compelled to perform their proper functions as the servants and not the masters of the people.

8. That to this end we invoke the aid of all fairminded men in all States of the Union in expelling and excluding from the halls of legislation, from our executive offices, and from the bench, such railwayofficials, railway-attorneys, or other hirelings, as prostitute public office to the base uses of private gain.

9. That leaving different sections and interests that desire cheap transportation to work out the problem in such manner as they may deem best, we earnestly invoke their careful consideration, their energetic action, and their resolute will, in regulat ing and controlling the rates of transportation, and giving remunerative wages to the producer, and cheap products to the consumer, untaxed by unearned charges for their carriage.

The transportation of persons and freight having passed almost entirely into the hands of railroad corporations throughout the country, these movements were in effect a protest against the charges of these corporations, and a combination to effect their reduction. The

usual considerations under which every branch of industry is said to regulate itself, do not seem to exist in this. There is an abundance of freight to tax the utmost capacities of the roads, and there is an absence of close competition interfering with them. These circumstances leave them practically "masters of the situation." Appeals were therefore made to State Legislatures, and to Congress, for the passage of laws regulating transportation by railroads. In answer to these applications, Illinois appears to be the only State in which there has been any legislation. (See ILLINOIS in this and the preceding volume.)

The application to Congress immediately brought up the question of the powers of that body over the railroad corporations which were authorized by the States. A report, embracing this important constitutional question, was made in the House of Representatives early in January, 1874, by the Committee on Railroads and Canals. A bill to regulate commerce by railroads among the several States having been previously referred to this committee, its chairman, George W. McCrary, of Iowa, presented the report. The following is so much of it as relates to the constitutional power of Congress over railroads;

Among the powers expressly conferred upon Congress by section 8, Article I. of the Constitution, is the power" to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States and with the Indian tribes." In considering the question whether, under this provision, Congress has power to pass the bill reported, it will be unnecessary to inquire as to the nature and extent of the power conferred by this provision upon Congress. It will not be denied that this clause of the Constitution confers upon Congress by express words power to legislate upon the general subject of the regulation of commerce among the several States. It is not a negative provision; it it is not merely prohibitory. It is affirmative. It dedoes not declare what power Congress shall not have; clares that Congress "shall have power," etc. In order to show that this provision of the Constitution authorizes Congress to pass the bill reported, it is necessary to establish the following propositions:

1. That the "commerce among the several States" which may be regulated by Congress includes commerce carried from State to State by railroads.

2. That to regulate the charges for carrying freight limit them to what is fair and reasonable and prevent or passengers upon inter-State railroads, so as to extortion, is a legitimate exercise of the power to

regulate such commerce.

by reason and authority. The term "commerce," as These propositions are abundantly supported both employed in the Constitution, undoubtedly means intercourse and exchange both of persons and property between different States and communities. It refers to the commerce itself, and not to the particular manner in which it is carried on. If it could be held to apply to the latter, and if it could be shown that the constitutional provision in question was confined in its operation to commerce to be carried on by the same mode in existence when the Constitution was adopted, all commerce among the several States might escape regulation by abandoning entirely the vehicles in use in 1787. In this way the plain provision of the Constitution might be nullified if this construction of it could be sustained. Upon this subject Judge Redfield, in his able and exhaustive work on the law of railways, has this to say:

The natural import and construction of the terms of the Constitution would not seem to admit of much doubt, judging from the language merely. The meaning of the word commerce at the time the Constitution was adopted must have been definitely settled and well enough understood. The word, as is well understood, is derived from the Latin commercium, which is found almost in its original form in most of the languages of modern Europe. It means, in its most literal sense, intercourse and exchange both of persons and commodities. It is more nearly synonymous with traffic than with any other word in the language, probably. Its great natural divisions for ages have been foreign and inland. The regulation of all the former and that portion of the latter which extended beyond the limits of a single State was, as we have seen by the organic law of our national Government, secured to the nation, and the remainder was naturally left to the particular State where it exclusively existed. It is obvious that the purposes of the provisions was not to be confined to future commerce carried on in the same mode as it was then-i. e., by ship and boat navigation propelled exclusively by wind. If that had been so, the provision could not have been applied to that large portion of commerce now carried on by steampower, which has already become very considerable and is constantly increasing in a rapidly-advancing ratio. * * The fact that the entire subject of regulating all commerce among the different States, including all the means and appliances by which it was carried on, was committed to Congress, and that, thereafter, the States were to have no concurrent action in the regulation of the same, would seem to reduce the question of regulating inter-State railway traffic to the single inquiry, whether it forms any portion of the commerce of the country which requires to be regulated at all? Those who assume to argue that Congress has no power to regulate the traffic upon these extended lines of railways reaching from one end of the Union to the other must, if they would meet the question fairly, either say the traffic on these extended lines of railway, amounting to many millions annually-probably ten times as much as the entire commerce of the country at the time of the adoption of the Constitution-is not commerce at all, or, if it be, is not subject to any regulation or control whatever; for it is certain the States have neither the power nor capacity to regulate, to any pur pose or with any efficiency, this inter-State railway traffic. It must then, come under the control of Congress or be left to his own devices and impulses--an experiment never yet tried in any other country.-(Redfield on Railways, pp. 720,722.)

In the great case of Gibbons vs. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, which arose and was decided in 1824, when steam navigation was in its infancy, it was held that coinmerce comprehended navigation as well as intercourse and traffic, and no doubt was expressed as to the right of Congress to regulate it when carried on by an agency not known when the Constitution was adopted-to wit, the power of steam. On the contrary, the power to regulate inter-State and foreign commerce, when carried on by means of steam-vessels, was distinctly asserted; and if extended to steam-vessels why not to steam-cars, since they were alike unknown when the Constitution was adopted? The opinion in this case (Gibbons vs. Ogden) was delivered by Chief-Justice Marshall, and it discusses so ably the very question we are now considering, viz., the nature and extent of the power given to Congress to regulate commerce-that we feel constrained to quote from it as follows:

The subject to be regulated is commerce; and our Constitution being, as was aptly said at the bar (by Mr. Webster), one of remuneration and not of definition, to ascertain the extent of the power it becomes necessary to settle the meaning of the word.

The counsel of the appellee would limit it to traffic, to buying and selling, or the interchange of commodities, and do not admit that it comprehends navigation, This would restrict a general term, applicable to many objects, to one of its significations. Commerce, undoubtedly is traffic; but it is something more, it is intercourse. It describes the commercial intercourse between nations and parts of nations, in all its branches, and is regulated by prescribing rules for carrying on that intercourse.

And again:

To what commerce does this power extend? The Constitution informs us: to commence with foreign nations and among the several States and with the Indian tribes. It has, we believe, been universally admitted that these

words comprehend every species of commercial intercourse between the United States and foreign nations. No sort of trade can be carried on between this country and any another to which this power does not extend. It has been truly said that commerce, as the word is used in the Constitution, is a unit, every part of which is indicated by the term. If this be the admitted meaning of the word in its application to foreign nations, it must carry the same meaning throughout the sentence and remain a unit, unless there be some plain, intelligible clause which alters it.

The object to which the power is next applied is to commerce among the several States." The word "among means intermingled with." A thing which is among others is intermingled with them. Commerce among the States cannot stop at the external boundary-line of each State, but may be introduced into the interior.

It is not intended to say that these words comprehend that commerce which is completely internal, which is carried on between man and man in a State or between different parts of the same State, and which does not extend to or affect other States. Such a power would be inconvenient, and certainly is not necessary. Comprehensive as the word "among" is, it may very properly be restricted to that commerce which concerns more States than one. The phrase is not one which would probably have been selected to indicate the completely interior traffic of a State, because it is not an apt phrase for that purpose, and the enumeration of the particular classes of commerce to which the power was to be extended would not have been made had the intention been to extend the power to every description. The enumeration presupposes something not enumerated, and that something, if we regard the language or the subject of the sentence, must be the exclusively internal commerce of a State.

And here follows from the pen of this great jurist, and as the announcement of the Supreme Court, perhaps the best definition of the line which divides the State from the Federal jurisdiction which can anywhere be found. It is in the following words:

The genius and character of the whole Government seem to be that its action is to be applied to all the external concerns of the nation, and to those internal concerns which affect the States generally, but not to those which are completely within a particular State, which do not affect other States, and with which it is not necessary to interfere for the purpose of executing some of the general powers of the Government. The completely internal commerce of a State then, may be considered as reserved for the State itself.

After showing that in regulating commerce with foreign nations the power of Congress does not stop at the jurisdictional lines of the several States, but may be exercised wherever the subject exists, the court proceeds to say:

This principle is, if possible, still more clear, when applied to commerce among the several States. They join each other, in which case they are separated by a mathematical line; or, they are remote from each other, in which case other State lines lie between them. What is commerce among them, and how is it to be conducted? Can a trading expedition between two adjoining States commence and terminate outside of each? And if the trader's intercourse be between two States remote from each other, must it not commence in one, terminate in the other, and probably pass through a third? Commerce among the States must of necessity be commerce with the States.

Judge Cooley, in his work on "Constitutional Limitations," after referring to this and other cases on the subject, says:

It is not doubted that Congress has the power to go be yond the general regulations of commerce, which it is accustomed to establish, and to descend to the most minute directions, if it shall be deemed advisable, and that to whatever extent ground shall be covered by these direcions, the exercise of State power is excluded. Congress may establish police regulations as well as the State, confining their operations to subjects over which it is given control by the Constitution.-(Cooley on "Constitutional Limitations," 586.)

The very question now under consideration is discussed and decided by Mr. Justice Miller, of the Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of Clay vs. the Clinton Bridge Company, reported by the

American Law Register in January, 1868. From the very able and conclusive opinion in that case we quote as follows:

known.

Navigation, however, is only one of the elements of commerce. It is an element of commerce because it affords the means of transporting passengers and merchandise, the interchange of which is commerce itself. Any other mode of effecting this would be as much an element of commerce as navigation. When this transportation or interchange of commodities is carried on by land, it is commerce as well as when carried on by water, and the power of Congress to regulate it is as ample in the one case as in the other. The commerce among the States spoken of in the Constitution must, at the time that instrument was adopted, have been mainly of this character, for the steamboat, which has created our great internal commerce on the rivers, was then unAnother means of transportation, equal in importance to the steamboat, has also come into existence since the Constitution was adopted: a means by which merchandise is transported across States and kingdoms in the same vehicle in which it started. The railroad now shares with the steamboat the monopoly of the carrying trade. The one has, with great benefit, been subjected to the control of salutary Congressional legislation, because it is an instrument of commerce. Is there any reason why the other should not? However this question may be answered in regard to that commerce which is conducted wholly within the limits of a State, and is therefore neither foreign commerce nor commerce among the States, it seems to me that where these roads become parts of great highways of our Union, transporting a commerce which embraces many States, and destined, as some of these roads are, to become the channels through which the nations of Europe and Asia shall interchange their commodities, there can be no reason to doubt that to regulate them is to regulate commerce both with foreign nations and among the States; and that to refuse to do this is a refusal to discharge one of the most important duties of the Federal Government. As already intimated, the shackles with which the different States fettered commerce, in their selfish efforts to benefit themselves at the expense of their confederates, was one of the main causes which led to the formation of our present Constitution. The wonderful growth of that commerce, since it has been placed exclusively under the control of the Federal Government, has justified the wisdom of our fathers. But are we to remit the most valuable part of that commerce again to the control of the States, and to the consequent vexations and burdens which the States may impose through whose territories it must be carried on? And must all this be permitted because the carrying is done by a method not thought of when the Constitution was framed? For myself I must say I have no doubt of the right of Congress to prescribe all needful and proper

regulations for the conduct of this immense traffic over any railroad which has voluntarily beceme part of one of those lines of inter-State communication, or to authorize the creation of such roads, when the purposes of interState transportation of persons and property justify or require it.

The recent decision of the Supreme Court in the case of the State freight tax (15 Wallace, 232) seems to the committee entirely conclusive of the question we are considering. In that case inter-State commerce by railway was held to be the subject exclusively of congressional control and regulation, and a statute of the State of Pennsylvania was held to be unconstitutional and void because it attempted to do that which the court held to be in the nature of a

regulation of that commerce. The regulation attempted by the State was in the shape of a tax upon freight carried by any railroad or other transportation company "doing business within the State of Pennsylvania." The court hold that this was a regulation of commerce, and being such, in so far as it applied to inter-State commerce, it was unconstitutional. The opinion in this case is itself an admirable and exhaustive treatise upon the very question we are considering. Its conclusion is that the State can make no law in the nature of a regulation of commerce which can apply to "freight taken up within the State and carried out, or taken up in other States and brought within her limits." In delivering the opinion of the court, Mr. Justice Strong said:

Beyond all question the transportation of freight or of the subjects of commerce for the purpose of exchange or sale is a constituent of commerce itself. This has never been doubted, and probably the transportation of articles of trade from one State to another was the prominent idea in the minds of the framers of the Constitution when to Congress was committed the power to regulate commerce among the several States. *** Nor does it make any difference whether this interchange of commodities is by land or by water. In either case the bringing of the goods from the seller to the buyer is commerce.

It is by no means important, in order to establish the power of Congress to pass the bill reported, that it should be made to appear that the power of Con. gress over inter-State commerce is exclusive. The power is ample, whether it be exclusive or not. But it seems to the committee that the case first cited is conclusive of the question, and leaves no doubt that the power of Congress is exclusive. Upon this point the court say:

It is not necessary to the present case to go at large into the much-debated question whether the power given to Congress by the Constitution to regulate commerce among the States is exclusive. In the earlier decisions of this court it was said to have been so entirely vested in Congress that no part of it can be exercised by a State. It has indeed often been argued and sometimes intimated by the court that so far as Congress has not legislated on the subject the States may legislate respecting interState commerce. Yet, if they can, why may they not add regulations to commerce with foreign nations, beyond those made by Congress, if not inconsistent with them? for the power over both foreign and inter-State commerce is conferred upon the Federal Legislature by the by this court that the power to regulate inter State as same words; and certainly it has never yet been decided well as foreign commerce is not exclusively in Congress. And again the court says: "The rule has been asserted with great clearness that whenever the subjects over which a power to regulate commerce is asserted are in their nature national or admit of one uniform system or plan of regulation, they may justly be said to be of such a nature as to require exclusive legislation by Congress, Surely transportation of passengers or merchandise through a State, or from one State to another, is of this nature."

These authorities leave no room for doubt concerning the power of Congress to regulate that commerce among the several States which is now carried on by means of railroads. They establish conclusively that the power of Congress extends to all commerce which concerns more than one State, and that it necessarily includes the carrying of freight and passengers from a place in one State to a place in another State. It reaches and controls that commerce which is beyond the reach of any single State because not completely internal within any one State.

The consideration of the second proposition is here omitted as less important.

For the financial condition of the United States, see the article FINANCES. For the foreign relations of the country, see the President's message in PUBLIC DOCUMENTS, and the title DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. For the military and naval affairs of the country, see ARMY AND NAVY respectively; and for the general condition of internal affairs, see CONGRESS and the several States.

The emigration to the United States in 1873 amounted to 437,004, and was of greater magnitude than that of any preceding year, except 1872, when the number of alien passengers that arrived was 449,483. This makes the total number of immigrants, who have come to the United States since 1820, 8,808,141, which, with the estimated number of arrivals prior to that date (250,000) makes 9,058,141 as the aggregate number of aliens who have come from foreign countries to our shores. It is calcu