Interstate commerce

“ If it were not for the interstate commerce clause of the United States Constitution we would surely have interstate protective tariff, in spite of the fact that freedom of commerce among the states has been one of the elemental causes of our progress as a nation. ”

“ Congress was not unaware that [p118] most manufacturing businesses shipping their product in interstate commerce make it in their shops without reference to its ultimate destination, and then, after manufacture, select some of it for shipment interstate and some intrastate, according to the daily demands of their business, and that it would be practically impossible, without disrupting manufacturing businesses, to restrict the prohibited kind of production to the particular pieces of lumber, cloth, furniture or the like which later move in interstate, rather than intrastate, commerce. ”

“ But that case did no more than to hold that those in interstate trade could not complain if interstate commerce carried its share of the burdens of local government which helped sustain it. And there was no showing that more than that was being exacted. ”

“ But in either view, whether considered as absolute sales or executory contracts of sale, they were, as already stated, transactions of interstate commerce. They were made between citizens of different states, and involved the transportation of the article sold from one state to another. A sale of an article between such citizens, and its transportation from one state to another for delivery to the purchaser, are the essential elements of interstate commerce. ”

“ All great business concerns are engaged in interstate commerce, and it was beyond question the intention of the founders of our Government that interstate commerce in all its branches and aspects should be under national and not State control. ”

“ Yet state government itself is an 'enterprise' with a very substantial effect on interstate commerce, for the States spend billions of dollars each year on programs that purchase goods from interstate commerce, hire employees whose labor strife could disrupt interstate commerce, and act on such commerce in countless subtle ways. ”

“ It has always been understood that one of the purposes of the interstate commerce law was to prevent a carrier from giving, and a shipper from receiving, transportation services at less than the published tariff rates, and to preclude what is equivalent, namely, the furnishing of a service at tariff rates to one shipper which is withheld from others. ”

“ Mill shipments, whether shipped from within or from without the state, are subject to the agreed prices. From the standpoint of respondents, restraint upon price competition in their interstate commerce is as desirable as in their business local to the states. In both classes of business, they are stimulated by the same motive to lessen competition. All the salesmen while in intrastate territory are required to sell at prices fixed by agreement. ”

“ Interstate commerce is now chiefly conducted by railroads; and the great corporation has supplanted the mass of small partnerships or individuals. The proposal to make the National Government supreme over, and therefore to give it complete control over, the railroads and other instruments of interstate commerce is merely a proposal to carry out to the letter one of the prime purposes, if not the prime purpose, for which the Constitution was rounded. ”

“ A pertinent example of an attempt by the government to keep competition alive is the Interstate Commerce law. Before its passage the railway companies had a patched-up and nominally illegal species of combination to restrict competition, known as pooling. ”

“ In fact, they lacked authority to engage by agent or otherwise in the retail transactions carried on by the local companies. Interstate commerce is a practical conception and what falls within it must be determined upon consideration of established facts and known commercial methods. ”

“ At the beginning of the national era the internal commerce of the United States gave small promise of the tremendous development it was to undergo during the ensuing century. There was as yet too little differentiation of occupation to give rise to a large interstate trade in native products, and the proximity of the greater part of the population to the seacoast made it cheaper and more convenient to carry on the small interstate trade that did exist by means of small sailing vessels plying along the coast. ”

“ In the last-named case, which concerned a combination of sugar refineries controlling a large proportion of the product of the country, it was said that commerce succeeds manufacture and is not a part of it. The relation of the manufacturer to interstate and foreign commerce being thus only incidental and indirect, the business is subject to state control. By a series of decisions the transportation of persons has been decided to be commerce. ”

“ Now, it is apparent from the evidence in this case that many American manufacturers, dealers, and localities, in almost every line of manufacture and business, are the competitors of foreign manufacturers, dealers, and localities for supplying the wants of American consumers at interior places in the United States, and that under domestic bills of lading they seek to require from American carriers like service as their foreign competitors in order to place their manufactured goods, property, and merchandise with interior consumers. The act to regulate commerce secures them this right. ”

“ It is no limitation upon property rights or freedom of contract to require that when men receive from Government the privilege of doing business under corporate form, which frees them from individual responsibility, and enables them to call into their enterprises the capital of the public, they shall do so upon absolutely truthful representations as to the value of the property in which the capital is to be invested. Corporations engaged in interstate commerce should be regulated if they are found to exercise a license working to the public injury. ”

“ Such laws as the franchise-tax law in this State, which the Court of Appeals recently unanimously decided constitutional- such a law as that passed in Congress last year for the purpose of establishing a Department of Commerce and Labor, under which there should be a bureau to oversee and secure publicity from the great corporations which do an interstate business--such a law as that passed at the same time for the regulation of the great highways of commerce so as to keep these roads clear on fair terms to all producers in getting their goods to market--these laws are in the interest not merely of the people as a whole, but of the propertied classes. For in no way is the stability of property better assured than by making it patent to our people that property bears its proper share of the burdens of the State; ”

“ An unrestrained intercourse between the States themselves will advance the trade of each, by an interchange of their respective productions, not only for the supply of reciprocal wants at home, but for exportation to foreign markets. The veins of commerce in every part will be replenished, and will acquire additional motion and vigor from a free circulation of the commodities of every part. ”

“ There can be no doubt that easy, speedy, cheap, and general inter-communication to internal trade,--whether by means of roads and canals, as in England, or by means of rivers as in America, is advantageous to foreign commerce, both directly and indirectly. It is advantageous directly, in so far as it enables the manufacturer with great facility, and at little expence, to transmit his goods to the places of exportation ”

“ Our produce will be augmented to an incalculable amount in articles of the greatest value for domestic use and foreign commerce. Our navigation will in like degree be increased, and as the shipping of the Atlantic States will be employed in the transportation of the vast produce of the Western country, even those parts of the United States which are most remote from each other will be further bound together by the strongest ties which mutual interest can create. ”

“ The non-intercourse would press most severely on the Southern and Western States, who depend chiefly on the immediate exchange of their productions for foreign goods, and would throw almost the whole commerce of the nation into the hands of the Eastern States, without competition, and also add a premium on their manufactures at the expense of the agricultural interest to the South and West. ”

“ In a world of tariffs, trade barriers, empire or domestic preferences, and various forms of parochialism from which we are by no means free, I think a rule that it is restraint of trade to enter a foreign market through a separate subsidiary of limited scope is virtually to foreclose foreign commerce of many kinds. ”

“ It is true that we do not have a large share of the foreign carrying trade, but it is also true that our merchant marine, including the vessels engaged in foreign and domestic trade and river and lake navigation, is second only to that of Great Britain. The domestic commerce of the United States, a free trade extending from Florida to Sitka, from Eastport to San Diego, is vastly greater than the foreign commerce of Great Britain. ”

“ Again, when the several manufactures are made in one place, and shipped off in another, the carriage, postage, and travelling charges, will enhance the price of such manufacture, and lessen the gain upon foreign commerce. And lastly, when the imported goods are spent in the port itself, where they are landed, the carriage of the same into other places will create no further charge upon such commodity; all which particulars tend to the greater gain by foreign commerce. ”

“ The commerce of the United States with foreign nations, and especially the export of domestic productions, has of late years largely increased; but the greater portion of this trade is conducted in foreign vessels. The importance of enlarging our foreign trade, and especially by direct and speedy interchange with countries on this continent, can not be overestimated; and it is a matter of great moment that our own shipping interest should receive, to the utmost practical extent, the benefit of our commerce with other lands. ”

“ The term "internal commerce," though in its fullest signification embracing every purchase, sale, and exchange of commodities between the individuals of a country together with the business of transmitting intelligence and of transporting persons and things from place to place, is here used primarily as applying to the interchanges of commodities among the various sections of the United States carried on over interior lines of transportation--the rivers, highways, canals, lakes and railroads. ”

“ The United States have every means, by nature, to enable them to distribute supplies mutually among one another; to supply other nations with many articles, and to carry for other nations. Our commerce would not be kindly received by foreigners, if transacted solely by ourselves. As it is the spirit of commercial nations to engross as much as possible the carrying trade, this makes it necessary to defend our commerce. But how shall we compass this end? England has arisen to the greatest height, in modern times, by her navigation act, and other excellent regulations. ”

“ The shipping interest, also, has suffered severely, still more severely, probably, than commerce. If any thing should strike us with astonishment, it is that the navigation of the United States should be able to sustain itself. Without any government protection whatever, it goes abroad to challenge competition with the whole world; and, in spite of all obstacles, it has yet been able to maintain eight hundred thousand tons in the employment of foreign trade. ”

“ It is indisputable that whatever gives facility and security to navigation cheapens imports and all who consume them are alike interested in what ever produces this effect. If they consume, they ought, as they now do, to pay; otherwise they do not pay. The consumer in the most inland State derives the same advantage from every necessary and prudent expenditure for the facility and security of our foreign commerce and navigation that he does who resides in a maritime State. Local expenditures have not of themselves a corresponding operation. ”

“ The full appreciation of the opportunities which our front on the Pacific Ocean gives to commerce with Japan, China, and the East Indies, with Australia and the island groups which lie along these routes of navigation, should inspire equal efforts to appropriate to our own shipping and to administer by our own capital a due proportion of this trade. Whatever modifications of our regulations of trade and navigation may be necessary or useful to meet and direct these impulses to the enlargement of our exchanges and of our carrying trade I am sure the wisdom of Congress will be ready to supply. ”

“ Do not such restrictions affect the very foundation of interstate trade? How is a manufacturer or a merchant of one state to sell his goods in another state without, in some way, obtaining orders therefor? ”

“ This is a matter of giving the inland farms and factories a fari access to the sea which will enable them to compete in foreign commerce, as well as to make imports as equally available as possible, regardless of distance from port. Ocean rates to a given foreign port are the same from all Atlantic ports, so that any differences in the costs of reaching the coast from the inland cannot be offset and represent net differences in the costs of reaching foreign markets. ”

“ If the Legislature should decide that it was no longer necessary to keep up the Navigation Laws as a means of national security, no doubt the consumers of foreign articles could purchase at a cheaper rate, since this would be the natural consequence of admitting imports in the ships of foreign nations. ”