Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“ Before a corporation can condemn rights it is required to have obtained, by other means, at least an acre on each side of the stream for a dam site, and this is supposed to show that the use is not public. It is only a reasonable precaution to insure good faith. A hardly consistent argument is that the dam should be built before the necessity of taking waters below can be shown. But a plan may show the necessity beforehand. All that we decide is that no general objection based on these grounds affects the jurisdiction of the probate court of the constitutionality of the act. ”

“ The principal argument presented that is open here, is that the purpose of the condemnation is not a public one. The purpose of the Power Company's incorporation, and that for which it seeks to condemn property of the plaintiff in error, is to manufacture, supply, and sell to the public, power produced by water as a motive force. In the organic relations of modern society it may sometimes be hard to draw the line that is supposed to limit the authority of the legislature to exercise or delegate the power of eminent domain. ”

“ But to gather the streams from waste and to draw from them energy, labor without brains, and so to save mankind from toil that it can be spared, is to supply what, next to intellect, is the very foundation of all our achievements and all our welfare. ”