Joseph McKenna

“ We agree with counsel that it is unimportant in determining an answer whether the transit 'was by water or by railroad, or both water and railroad.' But no purpose to burden interstate commerce is evident in the statute, and the power of the state to tax everything which is part of what has been called 'the general property,' or 'the general mass of property,' of the state, is undoubted. ”

“ When the products of the farm or the forest are collected and brought in from the surrounding country to a town or station serving as an entrepot for that particular region, whether on a river or on a line of railroad, such products are not yet exports, nor are they in process of exportation, nor is exportation begun until they are committed to the common carrier for transportation out of the state to the state of their destination, or have started on their ultimate passage to that state. ”

“ Nor is that power impugned by the principle that protection is the consideration of taxation. There is protection during the transit through the municipalities of the state and at its termination in the state,-protection accommodated to the kind of property and as efficient as links are to the continuity of a chain.
There is nothing in the cases cited by appellant which sustains the opposite view. Trigg v. Glasgow, 2 Bush, 594, seems to have turned upon the interpretation of a state statute. ”