“ With the full power of the states over corporations created by them and with their authority in respect to local legislation, and with power in Congress over interstate commerce carried to its fullest degree, I cannot conceive that if these powers, admittedly possessed by both, be fully exerted, a remedy cannot be provided fully adequate to suppress evils which may arise from combinations deemed to be injurious. ”

“ It does not mean that all business must cease. A single railroad down a narrow valley or through a mountain gorge monopolizes all the railroad transportation through that valley or gorge. Indeed, every railroad monopolizes, in a popular sense, the trade of some area. Yet I suppose no one would say that the statute forbids a combination of men into a corporation to build and run such a railroad between the states.
I assume that the Minnesota charter of the Great Northern, and the Wisconsin charter of the Northern Pacific, both are valid. ”

“ Does the delegation of authority to Congress to regulate commerce among the states embrace the power to regulate the ownership of stock in state corporations, because such corporations may be in part engaged in interstate commerce? Certainly not, if such question is to be governed by the definition of commerce just quoted from Gibbons v. Ogden. Let me analyze the definition. 'Commerce undoubtedly is traffic, but it is something more,-it is intercourse;' that is, traffic between the states and intercourse between the states. ”

“ No contract is in question made by the owners of the stock controlling the railroads in the performance of their duties as carriers of interstate commerce. The sole contention is that as the result of the ownership of the stock there may arise, in the operation of the roads, a burden of interstate commerce. That is, that such burden may indirectly result from the acquisition and ownership. To maintain the contention, therefore, it must be decided that because ownership of property, if acquired, may be so used as to burden commerce, therefore to acquire and own is to burden. ”

“ But Congress certainly has not the power or authority under the commerce clause or any other provision of the Constitution, to limit and restrict the right of corporations created by the states, or the citizens of the states, in the acquisition, control, and disposition of property. Neither can Congress regulate or prescribe the price or prices at which such property or the products thereof, shall be sold by the owner or owners, whether corporations or individuals. ”

“ To say to the contrary would be to declare that no power on any subject, however local in its character, could be exercised by the states if it was deemed by Congress or the courts that there would be produced some effect upon interstate commerce. The question whether a burden is direct and therefore constitutes a regulation of interstate commerce is to be determined by ascertaining whether the power exerted is lawful, generally speaking, and then by finding whether its exercise in the particular case was such as to cause it to be illegal, because directly burdening interstate commerce. ”

“ When it is borne in mind that such universal action related to interests of the most vital character, involving property of enormous amount, concerning the welfare of the whole people, it is impossible in reason to deny the soundness of the assumption that it was the universal conviction that the states, and not Congress, had control of the subject-matter of the organization and ownership of railroads created by the states. ”

“ If such a remote result of the exercise of an ordinary incident of property and personal freedom is enough to make that exercise unlawful, there is hardly any transaction concerning commerce between the states that may not be made a crime by the finding of a jury or a court. The personal ascendency of one man may be such that it would give to his advice the effect of a command, if he owned but a single share in each road. The tendency of his presence in the stockholders' meetings might be certain to prevent competition, and thus his advice, if not his mere existence, become a crime. ”

“ Undoubtedly the states possess power over corporations created by them, to permit or forbid consolidation, whether accomplished by stock ownership or otherwise, to forbid one corporation from holding stock in another, and to impose on this or other subjects such regulations as may be deemed best. ”

“ For the regulation of commerce as thus defined there can be only one system of rules, applicable alike to the whole country; and the authority which can act for the whole country can alone adopt such a system. ”

“ Where an authority is exerted by a state which is within its power, and that authority as exercised does not touch interstate commerce or its instrumentalities, and can only have an effect upon such commerce by reason of the reflex and remote results of the exertion of the lawful power, it cannot be said, without a contradiction in terms, that the power exercised is a regulation, because a direct burden upon commerce. ”

“ If the power embraces ownership, then the authority of Congress over all ownership which, in its judgment, may affect interstate commerce, necessarily exists. In other words, the logical result of the asserted distinction amounts to one of two things: Either that nothing is decided, or that a decree is to be entered having no foundation upon which to rest. ”

“ Nearly all the railways in the country have been constructed under state authority, and it cannot be supposed that they intended to abandon their power over them as soon as they were finished. The power to construct them involves necessarily the power to impose such regulations upon their operation as a sound regard for the interests of the public may seem to render desirable. In the division of authority with respect to interstate railways Congress reserves to itself the superior right to control their commerce, and forbid interference therewith ”

“ One may search in vain in the acts of Congress for any legislation even suggesting that the power over these subjects was deemed to be in Congress. On the contrary, the legislation of Congress concerning the instrumentalities of railroads under the interstate commerce power clearly refutes the contention, since that legislation relates only to such instrumentalities during their actual use in interstate commerce, and not otherwise. ”

“ I think that charter would be good, and I think the whole argument to the contrary rests on a popular instead of an accurate and legal conception of what the word 'monopolize' in the statute means. I repeat, that in my opinion there is no attempt to monopolize, and what, as I have said, in my judgment amounts to the same thing, that there is no combination in restraint of trade until something is done with the intent to exclude strangers to the combination from competing with it in some part of the business which it carries on. ”

“ In the next place, in the case of railroads it is evident that the size of the combination is reached for other ends than those which would make them monopolies. The combinations are not formed for the purpose of excluding others from the field. Finally, even a small railroad will have the same tendency to exclude others from its narrow area that great ones have to exclude others from the greater one, and the statute attacks the small monopolies as well as the great. The very words of the act make such a distinction impossible in this case, and it has not been attempted in express terms. ”

“ I am no friend of artificial interpretations because a statute is of one kind rather than another, but all agree that before a statute is to be taken to punish that which always has been lawful, it must express its intent in clear words. ”

“ The state of Maryland had chartered the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company, and in the charter had imposed upon it the duty of paying to the state a certain proportion of all its receipts from freight, which applied as well to interstate as domestic freight. The argument was that these provisions were repugnant to the commerce clause because they necessarily inereased the sum which the railroad would have to charge, and thereby constituted a regulation of commerce. ”

“ It is equally clear that Congress has no jurisdiction over, and cannot make criminal, the aims, purposes, and intentions of persons in the acquisition and control of property which the states of their residence or creation sanction and permit. ”

“ The argument now made is, as the power extends to instrumentalities, and railroads are such instrumentalities, therefore the acquisition and ownership of railroads by persons or corporations is commerce and subject to the power of Congress to regulate. ”

“ In other words, where the power is lawful but it is asserted that it has been so exerted as to amount to a direct burden, there must be, so to speak, a privity between the manifestation of the power and the resulting burden. The distinction is well illustrated by the cases which have been referred to, and was very lucidly pointed out by Judge Jackson in the Greene Case. ”

“ Furthermore, while at times judges need for their work the training of economists or statesmen, and must act in view of their foresight of consequences, yet, when their task is to interpret and apply the words of a statute, their function is merely academic to begin with,-to read English intelligently, and a consideration of consequences comes into play, if at all, only when the meaning of the words used is open to reasonable doubt. ”

“ Great cases, like hard cases, make bad law. For great cases are called great, not by reason of their real importance in shaping the law of the future, but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment. These immediate interests Under these circumstances Mr. Morgan and Mr. Hill organized under the laws of New Jersey the Northern Securities Company. The purpose was that the company should become the holder of the stock of the two railroads. ”

“ Justice Holmes concur in this dissent. exercise a kind of hydraulic pressure which makes what previously was clear seem doubtful, and before which even well settled principles of law will bend. What we have to do in this case is to find the meaning of some not very difficult words. We must try,-I have tried,-to do it with the same freedom of natural and spontaneous interpretation that one would be sure of if the same question arose upon an indictment for a similar act which excited no public attention, and was of importance only to a prisoner before the court. ”

“ How, consistently with the proposition, can the great number of cases be explained which, in both the Federal and state courts, have dealt with the ownership of railroads and their instrumentalities by foreclosure and otherwise under the assumption that the rights of the parties were controlled by state laws governing the subject? ”