Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“ This being clear, it is held reasonable and constitutional to get at the worth of such a line, in the absence of anything more special, by a mileage proportion. The tax is a tax on property, not on the privilege of doing the business, but it is intended to reach the intangible value due to what we have called the organic relation of the property in the state to the whole system. ”

“ And when that property is part of a system and has its actual uses only in connection with other parts of the system, that fact may be considered by the state in taxing, even though the other parts of the system are outside of the state. The sleepers and rails of a railroad, or the posts and wires of a telegraph company, are worth more than the prepared wood and the bars of steel or coils of wire, from their organic connection with other rails or wires and the rest of the apparatus of a working whole. ”

“ The contention of the company in its extreme form is that the state had no right to tax it anything for the years when its stock was of less market value than its property, because that ratio showed that the whole value of the company was in its tangible assets, and that the intangible property spoken of in the Adams Express Company Case was nothing. ”

“ The American Express Company is engaged in commerce among the states, including Indiana. It has real estate of a market value of nearly two million dollars, which is outside of Indiana, and which it says is not used in its business, and fifteen million and a half dollars' worth of personal property in New York, as to which it says the same; over three million dollars' worth of real estate used in connection with the business, and about a million and a half dollars' worth of personal property used in the business, of which there was less than eight thousand dollars' worth in Indiana. ”

“ The assessment being bad, for the reasons which we have stated, the board of tax commissioners acted without jurisdiction, according to the decision of the supreme court of Indiana. Hart v. Smith, 159 Ind. 182, 58 L. R. A. 979, 64 N. E. 661. We do not abate at all from the strictness of the rule that in general an injunction will not be granted against the collection of taxes. State Railroad Tax Cases, 92 U.S. 575, 23 L. ed. ”

“ Western U. Teleg. Co. v. Taggart, 163 U.S. 1, 26, 27; 41 L. ed. 49, 58, 59, 16 Sup. Ct. Rep. 1054; Pullman's Palace Car Co. v. Pennsylvania, 141 U.S. 18, 25, 35 L. ed. 613, 617, 3 Inters. Com. Rep. 595, 11 Sup. Ct. Rep. 876.
The general principles to be applied are settled. ”