Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/354

This page needs to be proofread.
326
HARVARD LAW REVIEW.
326

326 HARVARD LAW REVIEW, • to new matters as the modes of business and the habits of life of the people vary with each succeeding generation. 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. Just so is it with the grant to the national government of power over interstate commerce. The Constitution has not changed. The power is the same. But it operates to-day upon modes of interstate commerce unknown to the fathers, and it will operate with equal force upon any new modes of such commerce which the future may develop." II. Definition of Interstate Commerce. It will be most convenient, for present purposes, to define first what transportation by railroad constitutes State, and what inter- state commerce; and, in the discussion of the question, to divide such transportation into the following several possible classes : — (i) Traffic taken up within a State and carried to another point therein ; as, for example, a haul from A, in Massachusetts, to B, in Massachusetts. (2) Trafihc taken up within a State and carried to another point therein, but, upon the journey, transported through another State; as, for example, a haul from A, in Massachusetts, to B, in Massa- chusetts, passing through Vermont. (3) TrafBc through or across a State ; as, for example, a haul from C, in Vermont, to D, in Connecticut, through or across Massachusetts. (4) Traffic taken up inside of a State and carried without; as, for example, a haul from A, in Massachusetts, to C, in Vermont. (5) Traffic taken up outside of a State and brought within; as, for example, a haul from C, in Vermont, to A, in Massachusetts. (6) Traffic carried over a road wholly within a State, but in continuous transit from a point without said State to a point within, or from a point within to a point without; as, for example, a haul from A, in Massachusetts, to B, in Massachusetts, or from B, in Massachusetts, to A, in Massachusetts, over a Massachusetts railroad between said A and B, being part of a carriage, however, from C, in Vermont, to A, in Massachusetts, or from A, in Massa- chusetts, to C, in Vermont, over said Massachusetts railroad and another and separate railroad from said B to said C.