Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/566

53© HARVARD LAW REVIEW "There is an excellent clay in Nebraska for making bricks, a useful and creditable industry. Bricks are much needed in New York. The people of Nebraska have a right to make them as well as a right to have them shipped to New York at reasonable rates. But it might be that when such reasonable rates were deducted from the price received the remainder would be less than the 'actual cost of production.' That would not necessarily make the rates unreasonable. Unfortimate it may be, but still, of necessity, the claims of the shipper must wait upon the rights of those whose services he employs and whose property he uses. The employees who nm the train may have neither brick, com, nor railroad investment, but they must be paid for their services. The road must be repaired and bridges mended. Actual and honest invest- ment must receive fair reward. All this must be paid before the profits or actual cost of producers are paid unless the services and property of others are to be appropriated to the use of those who for the time may be engaged in an unprofitable business or disadvantageously located industry." Similarly, the commission in 1910 refused to lower rates on pine- apples to or near a point at which producers could market them profitably. "The position of the growers is that such rates should be established as will permit them to market their product at a reasonable profit. No such test of the justness of a transportation charge can be admitted." * The point that the utility must always be allowed a reasonable return, regardless of the value of the service, is not fully estab- lished by Reagan v. Farmers' Loan and Trust CoJ'^ and Coving- ton and Lexington Turnpike Co. v. Sandford,^^ which held that rates which produced no return on the investment were invalid; for both these cases intimated that the right to some return was not absolute, and would or might in some cases have to give way to the right of the public to pay no more than a reasonable price. But the matter is concluded by Northern Pacific Railway v. North Dakota,^ decided by the Supreme Court in 191 5. It would be possible, evidently, to admit the necessity of a " Florida Fruit & Vegetable Shippers' Assn. v. A. C. L. R. R., 17 I. C. C. 552, 560 (1910). Cf. In re San Diego & Southeastern Ry. Co., P. U. R. 1916 C, i (Cal. R. R. Com.). The commission refused to lower rates, in spite of the allegations of shippers that they could make no profit under existing rates. " 154 U. S. 362 (1894). « 164 U. S. 578 (1896). » 236 U. S. 58s (1915).