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improbable that the law must forbid this combination altogether.1 IX
to engage in some independent business, the problem is not to be dismissed. Natural persons engaging in a public employment have apparent power to engage in any collateral businesses that they please, and yet the law governing the conduct of a public business has certainly developed so far that they cannot discriminate in their own favor, and as will be seen in the next section the law may have gone so far as to forbid them from engaging in a collateral business in competition with the people they are serving. It is submitted that a corpora tion, whatever its prima facie powers, ought not to stand in any different position before the law from a natural person.1
Because of general policy if for no other reason it generally should be held ultra vires for a public service corporation to engage in any collateral business outside of its direct duties to the public in the same line of ser vice that it is conducting under its charter. This was said in an English case at an early date, Attorney-General v. Great Northern Railway (29 L. J. Ch. 794). There the ques tion was whether a railroad was engaging in an ultra vires actively in buying coal from collieries along its route which it transported to market in competition with other coal of private shippers. In holding that, it was Vice Chancellor Kinderley said, adverting to the policy of the matter: "There is no reason, as the affidavits show, why they should not —• there is great danger that they may — get into their hands the entire business in the coal of all that district of the country. If they can do that in regard to coal, what is to prevent their doing it with every species of agricultural produce all along their line? Why should they not become purchasers of corn, of all kinds of beasts and sheep, and every species of agricultural produce .and become great dealers in the supply of edibles to the markets of London; and why not every other species of commodity that is produced in every part of the country from which or to which their railway runs? I do not know where it is to stop, if the argument on the part of the company is to prevail. There is, therefore, great detri ment to the interests of the public, for this reason, taking merely the article of coal." But even granting that the public service company has some permissive clauses in its charter which might include the power
Some courts seem disposed to go one step further yet and to say that it may be inconsistent with public service for the public servant to engage at all in the out side business and to make use of his own facilities in conducting it. A square deci sion in point is Central Elevator Co. et al v. People (174 Ill. 203). The informations made the same general allegations in each case,— that defendants had stored grain owned by themselves in the particular warehouse of which they were proprietors; that not less than three fourths of all the grain received in the public warehouses in Chicago was owned by the warehousemen; that the grades for inspection of grain were such that the grain of each grade was not of the same quality, but that separate car loads of different quality and value were graded in the same grade; that by reason of advantages of the defendants, as owners of warehouses, in mixing and manipulating grain, and rebating storage charges, and otherwise, they had been enabled to drive out competition, and to hold and enjoy the privilege of buying grain free from com-
1 See Re Transportation of Salt, 10 Int. Com. Rep. i; and Central Yellow Pine Assn. v. Vicksburg, S. & P. Ry., 10 Int. Com. Rep. 193.
1 As the matters discussed in this section are questions of general corporation law, it is not thought necessary to subjoin any citations.
