Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“ The only reason for allowing a State to look beyond its borders when it taxes the property of foreign corporations is that it may get the true value of the things within it, when they are part of an organic system of wide extent, that gives them a value above what they otherwise would possess. The purpose is not to expose the heel of the system to a mortal dart-not, in other words, to open to taxation what is not within the State. ”

“ North Dakota is a State of plains, very different from the other States, and the cost of the roads there was much less than it was in mountainous regions that the roads had to traverse. The State is mainly agricultural. Its markets are outside its boundaries and most of the distributing centers from which it purchases also are outside. It naturally follows that the great and very valuable terminals of the roads are in other States. ”

“ It will be seen that it purports to be a special excise tax upon doing business in the State. As the law is administered, the tax commissioner fixes the value of the total property of each railroad by the total value of its stocks and bonds and assesses the proportion of this value that the main track mileage in North Dakota bears to the main track of the whole line. ”