THE NATION AND THE CONSTITUTION is that of the publican. " Federal," "National," " Union," " United States," "International," " American," these terms find a place in the names of the corporations that are carrying on our large business enter prises, and are not mere highsounding titles, but are truly indicative of the scope of the business conducted. They have taken national titles because their business is national and international. While engaged in the preparation of this paper I employed three young men in different libraries to examine and summarize state laws passed since 1890, directed against foreign corpo rations solely upon the ground of their alienage. My purpose was to institute a comparison between laws of that character now in force, and discriminatory statutes passed by the several states under the arti cles of confederation. But the mass of material turned in by these investigators was so great as to surpass any leisure at my command for its study and classification. The reports, however, leave no room for doubt that the laws now in force are both more vicious in character and varied in form than were those of the earlier period. At that time discrimination was confined in the main to taxation by states having ports of entry against those who had them not. To-day they embrace not only double, and frequently manifold taxation, but the thousand forms of regulation which recent governmental activity in the field of business has developed. A condition which was then deemed sufficient to cause the framing and adoption of the Constitution ought now to be adequate to compel the exercise of the power which the Constitution vested in the federal government for the very purpose of controlling such conditions. How far may the national government go in the control of those matters which have become in fact national? The situation fits exactly the terms of the" resolution passed in the convention that framed the Consti tution, and which was the source of all the powers and restrictions embodied in that
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instrument. It presents a case " to which the separate states are incompetent and in which the harmony of the United States may be interrupted by the exercise of indi vidual legislation." As to railroads there is no more reason why they should be subject to a divided authority than there is in the case of navigation. There will, of course, be in the one case, as in the other, local matters that can be best dealt with by local authority. But as to all that affects them as commercial agencies, whether that commerce be local or interstate, the railroad is a unit; its activities are national, and it ought to be subject solely to national authoritv. Divided control is inefficient in protecting the public, and grossly unjust in the burdens which it places upon the carrier. During the last winter there were passed in the states west of the Mississippi River one hundred and seventy-eight statutes dealing directly with transportation and its instru mentalities. The number of such statutes now in force throughout the entire country extends well into the thousands. They are conflicting, oppressive, inefficient. They seldom represent intelligent investigation, but in the main have had their origin in agitation, often in popular frenzy. State legislatures have not yet learned that due process of legislation, like due process of law, proceeds upon inquiry, and legislates only after hearing. Protection to the pub lic and justice to the carrier alike unite in the demand for a single governmental con trol. The power under the commerce clause of the Constitution is plain. The decisions of the Supreme Court have placed that subject beyond the realm of controversy. If the railroad as an instrument of commerce can only be dealt with justly and efficiently by a single authority the federal govern ment may assert and maintain its exclusive jurisdiction. Regulation is now inefficient because divided. If the federal govern ment shall take exclusive control, it will then be responsible alone for such a control as shall be both efficient and just. Public
