Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“ The inability of the state to prohibit the appellant from getting a foothold within its territory, both because of the statute and of its carrying on of commerce among the states, gives the appellant no right to use the soil of the streets, even though post roads, as against private owners, or as against the city or state, where it owns the land. ”

“ By § 15 the chief of the fire department and the superintendent of fire alarm and police telegraph are to inspect poles and wires, and if a pole is unsafe, or the attachments or insulations, etc., are unsuitable or unsafe, are to require them to be altered or replaced and removed, with a fine for each day's failure to obey the order. By § 26 violation of any provision, or failure to obey any requirement made under the ordinance by the city engineer or the just-named superintendent or chief, if not specially fined, is to be fined from ten to five hundred dollars a day, by the police justice. ”

“ Any license that the city may have granted as owner or representative of the owner of the public easement or otherwise may be assumed to have been revoked, and so far as the city's title is infringed by the appellant, nothing appears to limit the city's right to insist upon it, as fully as a private owner might. ”

“ The requirement that space be left in the conduits for wires of third parties, to be used upon permission by the city and compensation (§§ 4, 28) , is merely another incident of the necessity for insisting upon a single system. It would seem not to be unreasonable for legislation, apart from any question of property rights, to require that a single conduit should contain all the wires under a street. ”

“ It is no sufficient objection that, from the point of view of rental, the burden on certain poles may vary in a proportion different from the value of those poles. The notion of rental cannot be used thus to restrict the conditions that may be imposed. ”

“ By § 1 poles and wires are not to be put up 'until the city engineer shall have first determined the size, quality, character, number, location, condition, appearance, and manner of erection of' the same. By § 4 the committee on streets may require permission to be given to others to place upon the poles light current wires which, in the Committee's opinion, will not unreasonably interfere with the owners' business ”

“ One more objection to the ordinance is found in § 31, which limits the privilege as to the conduits to fifteen years, and provides that after that time the city may put such restrictions, conditions and charges as it sees fit, or may order the conduits removed. It seems to be thought that this is an attempt to make the appellant contract itself out of the benefit of the act of Congress. What we have said will show some reason for not so regarding the ordinance ”

“ The conditions are reasonable with reference to the occupation of the streets, considered as a whole, and are not made otherwise by the fact that there is also a specific money charge for each pole or underground mile of wire. ”