Transportation (penalty)

“ The words 'free from all toll or other charge for the transportation of property or troops' would have referred, by necessary implication, to transportation performed by the government itself, either in its own carriages or vessels, or in carriages or vessels procured and employed at its expense. No one would imagine for a moment that the turnpike or canal company would be bound to furnish the means of transportation, much less the propelling power and labor for performing it. ”

“ In exercising authority over their passenger fares, no distinction has been made between those interurban roads which were engaged in the general transportation of freight in addition to their passenger and express business and those which were not. ”

“ Through this well known and necessary practice of connecting cariers there has come about, without unity of ownership or physical operation, a singleness of charge and a continuity of transportation greatly to the advantage of the carrier, and beneficial to the great and growing commerce of the country. ”

“ If the cab which carries the passengers from the hotel to the ferry landing is engaged in interstate transportation, why is not the porter who carries the traveler's trunk from his room to the carriage also so engaged? If the cab service is interstate transportation, are the drivers of the cabs and the dealers who supply hay and grain for the horses also engaged in interstate commerce? ”

“ Transportation, as a service, is the commodity produced by common carriers. The manner in which the price of this commodity has been brought under governmental regulation has a direct bearing upon another problem just beginning to open up ”

“ PREFACE If the great American novel is ever written, I hazard the guess that its plot will be woven around the theme of American transportation, for that has been the vital factor in the national development of the United States. Every problem in the building of the Republic has been, in the last analysis, a problem in transportation. The author of such a novel will find a rich fund of material in the perpetual rivalries of pack-horseman and wagoner, of riverman and canal boatman, of steamboat promoter and railway capitalist. ”

“ The custody of transportation of all kinds by government would insure regularity, harmonious operation, safety and dispatch, at minimum cost, to all whose pursuits, interests or comfort, incline or compel them to its use. ”

“ If we just live long enough, we will have lived in every state in the Union.”
But transportation as we understand it to-day refers to the moving of freight, express, and mail, as well as to the moving of men and women. Man himself was the original burden-bearer and became the first transportation system, carrying combined freight and express. ”

“ By the Hepburn act it was declared that the term 'transportation' (italics ours) -- 'shall include cars and other vehicles and all instrumentalities and facilities of shipment or carriage, irrespective of ownership or of any contract, express or implied, for the use thereof, and all services in connection with the receipt, delivery, elevation, and transfer in transit, ventilation, refrigeration or icing, storage, and handling of property transported ”

“ Of course, air transportation, water transportation, rail transportation and motor transportation all have a kinship in that all are forms of transportation and their common features of public carriage for hire may be amenable to kindred regulations. ”

“ In the light of this general statement of principle, it was held that the effect of the transportation act is to offer a special privilege of using the public highways to the private carrier for compensation upon condition that he shall dedicate his property to the quasi public use of public transportation; that the private carrier is not obliged to submit himself to the condition, but, if he does not, he is not entitled to the privilege of using the highways. ”

“ In coming to this conclusion, we do not place any great stress upon the use of the work 'toll,' as being a word peculiarly applicable to charges for the use of a highway, as contradistinguished from the charge for transportation, which is more properly denominated 'freight;' for whilst this is undoubtedly true, it must be conceded, that, in the actual language of railroad legislation, the word 'toll' is very often used to express the charge for transportation also. ”

“ The general rule is that where transportation has acquired an interstate character 'it continues at least until the load reaches the point where the parties originally intended that the movement should finally end.' Ill. ”

“ As a proper compensation for motive power, cars, and all other facilities incident to transportation, two cents per mile will be allowed for passenger travel, subject to a discount of thirty-three and a third per cent as due to government for charter privileges. ”

“ The first section makes the act apply alike to common carriers engaged in the transportation of passengers or property wholly by railroad or partly by railroad and partly by water, under an arrangement for a continuous carriage or shipment. It is conceded that the carriers filing the bills in these cases were common carriers engaged in the transportation of passengers and property partly by railroad and partly by water, under a joint arrangement for a continuous carriage or shipment. ”

“ The difficulties which now beset the transportation question have all arisen from our having pursued a course, of late years, which rendered the settlement of convicts a curse instead of a blessing, as it was at first, when the system was directly the reverse. ”

“ It will not do to say that the transferring of grain through an elevator is one step in the process of transportation, and that, therefore, they are quasi common carriers discharging a public duty, and subject to public control. They are not carriers in any proper sense of the term. They may facilitate carriage; so does the boxing and packing of goods for transportation. The engineers, firemen, brakemen, and all the thousands of employes of a railroad company are helping the business of transportation ”

“ If one carries in his own conveyance for his own purposes it is transportation no less than when a public arrier at the instance of a consignor carriers and delivers to a consignee for a stipulated charge. ”

“ The circumstances and conditions of the transportation in respect to the work done by the carrier and the revenue earned are dissimilar, and may justify a reasonable difference in rate. The public interests are subserved by car-load classification of property that, on account of the volume transported to reach markets or supply the demands of trade throughout the country, legitimately or usually moves in such quantities. ”

“ THE SUPPLY TRAIN.
July 3, 1904. My Dear Boy:—Blacksmiths’ horses and shoemakers’ wives proverbially go unshod. A railroad puts up its poorest sample of transportation in the routine handling of its own material and supplies. Company stuff is moved and handled last of all; and probably at maximum expense. For example, if we wish to ship a car of wheels to division headquarters we load them after we are lucky enough to get an available car. ”

“ The law of the common carrier is the same to-day as when transportation on land was by coach and wagon, and on water by canal boat and sailing vessel, yet in its actual operation it touches and regulates transportation by modes then unknown, the railroad train and the steamship. ”

“ Its whole object and effect are to make it more sure that railroad companies shall perform the duty resting upon them by virtue of their employment as common carriers, to use the utmost care and diligence in the transportation of passengers and goods. ”

“ To consider transportation as a punishment, in the case of a large majority of such convicts, is pre-eminently absurd. Those of them that are employed as domestic servants have generally much lighter labour to perform, and much better fare, than free servants in the mother country; and after a few years' service, they obtain tickets of leave, or certificates of freedom; when they begin the world for themselves with prospects of success in business, or with means of dissipation, utterly beyond the reach of the industrious classes in England. ”

“ Transportation is a blessing to a colony when the convicts are kept in a minority, perhaps in a fourth or a fifth of the community to which they are sent, and when they are not hardened in crime, and all instructed in some useful trade. ”

“ We must remember the general purpose of the act, which is, as has been said, to obtain fair treatment for the public from the roads, and reasonable charges for the transportation of freight, and the honest performance of duty, with no improper or unjust preference or discrimination. ”

“ When in 1940 Congress provided for the regulation of water carriers in interstate and foreign commerce, it defined 'transportation in interstate * * * commerce' for the purpose of such regulation to mean 'transportation of persons or property- (1) wholly by water from a place in a State to a place in any other State, whether or not such transportation takes place wholly in the United States.' § 302 (i) (1) of the Transportation Act of 1940, 54 Stat. ”

“ Ability to render the service throughout the wide reaches of the territory, which the applicant professed to be willing to serve, may not have existed. Furthermore, the characteristics of the transportation service rendered are relevant to the territorial scope of the operations which the Commission may authorize. ”

“ The occasional prosperity of the transported person has been the opprobrium of the laws. He rises above his former condition; becomes a master where he was a bondman; patronises public amusements, and rides in his chariot past the pedestrian who received him in bonds. Great changes in condition are common everywhere: but transportation presents [Pg 333] the whole career of the exile, from the bar to the civic hall, as parts of the one drama. ”

“ It takes time to talk away or live down these little incidents. Now and then a modest shipper with about one car a year traveling in your direction, will unblushingly suggest that he be loaned one of your annual passes for a little trip down to New York, and I recall hearing of a wallet of transportation, in the wrong hands, being lost in the railway yards near Rochester. ”

“ That the express business, as fully described and shown in the record, is a branch of the carrying trade that has by the necessities of commerce and the usages of those engaged in transportation become known and recognized so as to require the court to take notice of the same as distinct from the ordinary transportation of the large mass of freight usually carried on steamboats and railroads. ”

“ Is the driving of living fat oxen, &c. a transportation of them within the true intent and meaning of the law?
There is no doubt but that the word transport, correctly interpreted as well as in its ordinary acceptation, means to carry, to convey; and in this sense it seems to a majority of the court the legislature intended to use it. The offence is made to consist in transporting in any waggon, cart, sleigh, boat, or otherwise, the prohibited articles. ”

“ The appellants argue that the phrase 'adequate, and more efficient or more economic, transportation' refers to carrier operations and expense and has no reference to the broader public interest which embraces service to shippers and the rates they pay. ”

“ It was not expected that a sprawling, chaotic, and cutthroat industry that had developed entirely in the private interest would be reduced to an orderly and regularized system of transportation in the public interest without stepping on a good many individual toes. ”

“ Granting, it will be said, that transportation is so immense a benefit to the mother country, in affording a safe and certain vent for its criminals; and to the colonies, by providing them with so ample a supply of forced labour, what is to be done when they will not receive it? ”

“ Finally, appellant urges that it is beyond the power of the Commission to limit its operations to 'transportation of not more than six passengers in any one vehicle.' The freedom is claimed to use buses or other multiple passenger type of conveyance. ”

“ To illustrate this thought, let us assume that a railroad needs one hundred flatcars to carry its peculiar freight and needs one hundred passenger cars for the accommodation of the people. It is self-evident that if the road uses all the flatcars and half the passenger cars to carry its freight, the balance of the passengers will have to make some other provision for transportation or walk. ”

“ When a motor carrier seeks to offer service where only rail transportation is presently authorized, the inherent advantages of the proposed service are a critical factor which the Commission must assess. ”

“ Justice Field for his decision in the last-cited case disposes equally of the case at bar. 'To bring the transportation within the control of the state, as part of its domestic commerce, the subject transported must be within the entire voyage under the exclusive jurisdiction of the state.' 9 Sawy. ”

“ Carriers are not at liberty to classify property as a basis of transportation rates and impose charges for its [Pg 156] carriage with exclusive regard to their own interests, but they must respect the interests of those who may have occasion to employ their services, and conform their charges to the rules of relative equality and justice which the act prescribes. ”