Maryland. This doctrine was more particularly applied to commercial regulations in the case of Crandall v. Nevada.63

The State of Nevada enacted a law providing that a capitation tax of one dollar should be levied upon every person leaving the State by any railroad or stage coach, such tax to be paid by the officers and agent of the railroad companies and the proprietors of the stage coaches. For a violation of this statute one Wm. H. Crandall was arrested and imprisoned. As a defense Crandall pleaded the unconstitutionality of the law, and the Supreme Court of Nevada upholding the statute, he carried the case to the Supreme Court of the United States by a writ of error. The principle enunciated in this case can be seen best by the following extracts from the decision:

"In the argument of the counsel for the defendant in error, and in the opinion of Supreme Court of Nevada, which is found in the record, it is assumed that this question must be decided by an exclusive reference to two provisions of the Constitution, namely that which forbids any State, without the consent of Congress, to lay any imposts or duties on imports or exports, and that which confers on Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several States.

"The question as thus narrowed down is not free from difliculties. * * *

"But we do not concede that the question before us is to be determined by the two clauses of the Constitution which we have examined.

"The people of these United States constitute our nation. They have a government in which all of them are deeply interested. This government has necessarily a capital established by law, where its principal operations are conducted. Here sits its legislature, composed of senators and representatives from the States and from the people of the State. Here resides the president, directing through thousands of agents the execution of the laws all over this vast country. Here is the seat of the supreme judicial power of the nation, to which all its citizens have a right to resort to claim justice at its hands. Here are the great executive departments, administering the offices of 36 Wallace, 35.

the mails, of the public lands, of the collection and distribution of the public revenues, and of our foreign relations. These are established and conducted under the admitted powers of the Federal government. That government has a right to call to this point any or all of its citizens to aid in its service, as members of the Congress, of the courts, of the executive departments, and to fill all its other offices; and this right cannot be made to depend upon the pleasure of a State over whose territory they must pass to reach the point where these services must be rendered. The government also has its offices of secondary importance in all other parts of the country. On the sea coasts and on the rivers it has its ports of entry. In the interior it has its land offices, its revenue offices and its sub-treasuries. In all these it demands the services of its citizens, and is entitled to bring them to these points from all quarters of the nation, and no power can exist in a State to obstruct this right that would not enable it to defeat the purpose for which the government was established.

"The Federal power has a right to declare and prosecute wars and, as a necessary incident, to raise and transport troops through and over the territory of any State of the Union.

"If this right is dependent in any sense, however limited, upon the pleasure of a State, the government itself may be overthrown by an obstruction to its exercise.

* **

"But if the government has these rights on her account, the citizen also has correlative rights. He has the right to come to the seat of government to assert any claim he may have upon that government or to any business he may have with it. To seek its protection, to share its offices, to engage in administering its functions, he has a right to free access to its seaports, through which all the operations of foreign trade and commerce are conducted, to the sub-treasuries, the land offices, the revenue offices, and the courts of justice in the several States, and this right is in its nature independent of the will of any State over whose soil he must pass in the exercise of it.

"The views here advanced are neither novel nor unsupported by authority. The question of the taxing power of the States.

as its exercise has affected the functions of the Federal government, has been repeatedly considered by this court, and the right of the States in this mode to impede or embarrass the constitutional operations of that government, or the rights which its citizens hold under it, has been uniformly denied."

Crandall v. Nevada emphasizes both the general supremacy of the Federal government and the wide extent of its power of regulation over commerce. Although the case, directly, merely denies a certain power to the States, it also, by the strongest inference, confers additional powers upon the central government. The control of the United States government as asserted in this case is a far stronger one than that proclaimed in Gibbons v. Ogden or Cooley v. Wardens of the Port. Any power which rests entirely upon a particular clause must of necessity fall short, in the extent of its application, of a power resting upon the spirit and intention of the whole Constitution. Such a power as the latter can be expanded to keep pace with the expansion of the nation, and can always give authority for whatever decrees of Federal regulation of commerce the public welfare may seem to demand.

$260. The Interstate Commerce Commission. Although Congress had passed an act for the regulation of railroads as early as 1866, it was not until the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act in 1887, that any real effort was made for an effective regulation of the business of common carriers who were engaged in interstate commerce. The immediate cause of the passage of this act was the decision in 1886, of the Supreme Court of the United States in Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railroad Co. vs. Illinois, holding that the States had no power to regulate rates within their borders charged by railroads on interstate shipments. This decision not only reversed the decision rendered in the case by the Supreme Court of Illinois, but was also contrary to the early decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, in the so-called Granger Cases, and clearly showed the necessity of Federal legislation on the subject.

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The result was the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act which became a law on February 4, 1887. The bill provided for the appointment of a commission with a general control over the business of all common carriers engaged in interstate commerce, which transport goods either entirely or partially by railroads. Common carriers engaged in interstate commerce who transport goods entirely by water, and independent express companies do not come within the provisions of the act.

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The commission has the power to declare the rates charged by railroads unreasonable, and at first they undertook to prescribe rates for the future. This right, however, was soon denied to them by the Supreme Court, with a consequent very great diminution of the efficiency of the commission. The commission for a number of years could not even prescribe a maximum and minimum rate. The most effective provisions of the "Interstate Commerce Act" have been those against discrimination and against pooling by the railroads, but even these have been avoided. and only partially enforced, and the success of the act to date has not been very marked. The responsibility for the failure falls about equally on each of the three of the departments of the government.

Amendatory acts were passed by Congress in 1889, 1893, 1903 and 1906. "The first of these was that of 1889 and gave a shipper an additional summary and effective remedy by writ of mandamus to compel the carrier to furnish equal facilities. That of 1893 remedied the difficulty growing out of the inability to enforce self-incriminating testimony. In 1903 was enacted the socalled Expedition Act, which materially expedited the procedure in suits brought by the United States, or suits prosecuted by direction of the attorney general in the name of the Interstate Commerce Commission. The Amendatory Act of February 19, 1903, known as the Elkin's Law, made very important changes, and materially enforced the provisions against discriminations, in that it made the published rates conclusive against the carrier. every deviation therefrom being punishable. The scope of the act was also materially extended as to the parties subject to its Case, 176 U. S. 479.

The Social Circle Case, 162 U. S. 184; Cincinnati Freight Bureau

provisions. Fine was substituted for imprisonment in the penal provisions of the act. None of these amendments have affected the rate-making power of the Commission."67

There is no definite standard of reasonableness in railroad rates. "The subject of the reasonableness of railroad rates and the factors to be considered in the determination of such reasonableness have thus been considered by the Federal courts in two classes of cases. That is, in cases arising under the Interstate Commerce Act, where the shipper complains that he is charged by the carrier more than a reasonable rate, and in cases arising under State laws, where the carrier complains that he is prohibited by the State law or order of a State commission having the force of law from charging a reasonable rate.

"While the Interstate Commerce Act reaffirms the common law in the requirement of reasonableness, neither the statute nor the common law furnishes any definite standard for the determination of what is reasonable. In ordinary business transactions a reasonable charge for a personal service is the resultant of the free economic forces of supply and demand. It is obvious that under the complicated conditions of railway transportation this free play of the economic forces of supply and demand does not ordinarily exist. When competition does act in determining railway rates, it is only at certain points, as terminal centers, where the rate may be made unreasonable from the carrier's point of view, while at local points on the same line it may not exist at all. The standard of reasonableness, therefore, is one thing for the railroad manager who wishes to secure at all times a reasonable profit upon the cost of service, and a very different thing for the shipper who wishes to secure at all times a reasonable profit for his own business as against his competitors in other communities."68

In the case of United States v. Trans-Missouri Freight Association the Supreme Court of the United States said on this point:

"There is another side to this question, however, and it may not be amiss to refer to one or two facts which tend to some