by John Marshall Harlan

“ The legislative department intended that all who obtained transportation on interstate lines should be treated alike in the matter of rates, and that all who availed themselves of the services of the railway company (with certain specified exceptions) should be on a plane of equality. Those ends cannot be met otherwise than by requiring transportation to be paid for in money, which has a certain value, known to all, and not in commodities or services, or otherwise than in money. ”

“ The decisive question in this case is whether the contract between the railway company and the Munsey Company is repugnant to the acts of Congress regulating commerce. In other words, could the company, in return for the transportation which it agreed to furnish and did furnish to the Munsey publisher over its interstate lines, and to his employees and to the immediate members of his and their families, accept as compensation for such service anything else than money, the amount to be determined by its published schedule of rates and charges? ”

“ The answer further avers that all the company's corporate powers as a common carrier are derived from an Indiana statute which prohibits the railway company from giving free tickets, free passes, or free transportation, but which, in express words, authorizes the company to issue transportation in payment for printing and advertising. It denied that the purchase of advertising space by a common carrier constituted any part of interstate commerce, or that Congress has any constitutional power to prohibit it from doing so. ”