Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“ The conclusion of the Court, therefore, allows the mere business convenience of the company (it saves storage tankage) to convert into interstate commerce that which all the parties, by their contract and conduct treated, and charged and paid for, as an intrastate transportation, and thereby subordinates, in my judgment, the substance to the merest form of the transaction. ”

“ As has been repeated many times, interstate commerce is a practical conception, and, as remarked by the court of first instance, a tax to be valid 'must not in its practical effect and operation burden interstate commerce.' It appears to us as a practical matter that the transmission of this stream of oil was interstate commerce from the beginning of the flow, and that it was none the less so that if different orders had been received by the pipe line it would have changed the destination upon which the oil was started and at which it in fact arrived. ”

“ Upon the declaration of the Court we may conjecture that if it had considered that the oil in question moved in interstate commerce it would have agreed with the Court below, and on this ground it is argued that the mistake, if any, was not in approving the statute but in the Court's conception of interstate commerce. But we must look at what the Court has done, not at its mode of reaching the result. What it has done is to decide that the statute covers all the oil produced in West Virginia and that it shall be upheld in so doing. The nature of the mistake that induced the act is immaterial. ”