Rufus Wheeler Peckham

“ If unhampered by contract, there is nodoubt of the power of the state to provide by legislation for maximum rates of charges for railroad companies, subject to the condition that they must be such as will admit of the carrier earning a compensation that, under all the circumstances, shall be just to it and to the public, and whether they are or not is a judicial question. ”

“ The action of the company upon its own volition, purely as a matter of internal administration, and in regard to the details of its business which it has the right to change at any moment, furnishes no argument for the existence of a power in a legislature to pass a statute in relation to the same business imposing additional burdens upon the company. ”

“ There is no reasonable ground upon which the legislation can be rested, unless the simple decision of the legislature should be held to constitute such reason. Whether the legislature might not in the fair exercise of its power of regulation provide that ordinary tickets purchased from the company should be good for a certain reasonable time is not a question which is now before us, and we need not express any opinion in regard to it. ”

“ But in all this we find it neither necessary nor appropriate, in order that the legislature may exercise its full right over these corporations, to make such a regulation as this, which discriminates against it and in favor of certain individuals, without any reasonable basis therefor, and which is not the fixing of maximum rates or the exercise of any such power.
The legislature having fixed a maximum rate at what must be presumed, prima facie, to be also a reasonable rate, we think the company, then, has the right to insist that all persons shall be compelled to pay alike ”

“ It is no answer to the objection to this legislation to say that the company has voluntarily sold 1,000-mile tickets good for a year from the time of their sale. What the company may choose voluntarily to do furnishes no criterion for the measurement of the power of a legislature. Persons may voluntarily contract to do what no legislature would have the right to compel them to do. ”

“ The legislature, having established such maximum as a general law, now assumes to interfere with the management of the company while conducting its affairs pursuant to and obeying the statute regulating rates and charges, and notwithstanding such rates it assumes to provide for a discrimination,-an exception in favor of those who may desire and are able to purchase tickets at what might be called wholesale rates; a discrimination which operates in favor of the wholesale buyer, leaving the others subject to the general rule. ”

“ The legislature has the power to secure to the public the services of the corporation for reasonable compensation, so that the public shall be exempted from unreasonable exactions, and it has also the authority to pass such laws as shall tend to secure the safety, convenience, comfort, and health of its partrons and of the public with regard to the railroad. ”

“ The power to compel the company to carry persons under the circumstances as provided for in this act, for less than the usual rates, does not seem to be based upon any reason which has hitherto been regarded as sufficient to authorize an interference with the corporation, although a common carrier and a railroad. ”

“ Ohio, supra, a statute of the state of Ohio required the company to stop certain of its trains at stations containing 3,000 inhabitants for a time sufficient to receive and let off passengers, and the statute was held to be a valid exercise of legislative power, and not an improper interference with interstate commerce. ”

“ If the power exist at all, what are the factors which make it unreasonable to say that the tickets shall be valid for five or for ten years? It may be said that circumstances can change within that time. ”

“ The police power is a general term used to express the particular right of a government which is inherent in every sovereignty. As stated by Mr. Chief Justice Taney, in the course of his opinion in the License Cases, 5 How. ”