Edward Douglass White

“ If, on the contrary, intangible property and franchise are two different objects, then to call the tax first by one and then by the other name gives rise not only to inaccuracy, but to misapprehension. ”

“ The freight lines do not transport the merchandise; the railways do; therefore the receipts of the freight lines as to such lines are not interstate commerce receipts. This illustration is but one of the many which at once suggest themselves. All the express business, the sleeping-car business, the tank lines, and manifold other forms of interstate commerce, will be stricken down, if the rule now applied to the tolls of an interstate bridge be enforced as to other means of interstate commerce. ”

“ It was doubtless the construction given by the Kentucky court to the statute which has caused the opinion of this court now announced to maintain the proposition that the traffic over the bridge which crosses the river between Kentucky and Indiana, and over which, in the nature of things, there can be, I think, nothing but interstate commerce, is not such commerce. ”

“ The franchise tax embraced in the last of the foregoing enumeration is not assessed by the local authorities, but by a board of valuation and assessment, composed of the state auditor, treasurer, and secretary of state, for it is said in section 4077, 'The auditor, treasurer and secretary of state are hereby constituted a board of valuation and assessment for fixing the value of said franchises,' and a subsequent sentence makes the state auditor the chairman of the board. ”