Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“ On July 25, 1922, the Interstate Commerce Commission, reciting that in the opinion of the Commission an emergency which required immediate action existed upon the railroad lines east of the Mississippi River, ordered that coal cars should be furnished to the mines according to a certain order of purposes numbered in classes 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, and that no coal embraced in classes 1, 2, 3 or 4 should be subject to reconsignment or diversion except for some purpose in the same or a superior class. ”

“ The right to come here depends upon the presence of some substantial constitutional question. But so far as such questions are raised we are of opinion that they are not substantial in view of previous decisions. We must take it that an emergency contemplated by the statute existed, as found by the Commission and alleged in the indictment. That in such circumstances Congress could require a preference in the order of purposes for which coal should be carried, consistently with the Fifth Amendment is clear, and is assumed in Peoria & Pekin Union Ry. ”

“ Illinois Central R. R. Co., 215 U.S. 452, 30 S.C.t. 155, 54 L. Ed. 280; United States v. Grimaud, 220 U.S. 506, 31 S.C.t. 480, 55 L. Ed. 563; Pennsylvania R. R. Co. v. Puritan Coal Mining Co., 237 U.S. 121, 133, 35 S.C.t. ”