The daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1873-1877, 1874-01-08
REMARKS BY THE N. Y. WORLD.

hEhAhhS IhE N. WOhL1Ds
The scheme here sketched will prove a
delusion to all who are simple enough to-
put any faith in it. A law of Congress
regulating the price of freightS on railroads
incorporated by the State Legislatures
would be in such fragrant violation of the
Constitution that the courts would upset it
as soon as a case could be made and
brought before them. The only source
from which it is possible to imagine such
power can be devised is that Of regulating
commerce between the States, cOnferredin
the following language
Congress shall have power to regulate commerce
with foreign nations and among the several States,
and with the Indian tribes"
The powers to regulate commerce with
foreign nations and between the States are
of equal scope, both being conferred in
precisely the same language We may
therefore safely reason from one to the
other. Did notion so cbimerical as that
Congress can fix the price of ocean treights
ever enter the head of any man outside a
lunatic asylum? But if prescribing
freights be constitutional regulation of
commerce between the States, it must be
an equally constitutional regulation of for
eign commerce, for both foreign and inter
State commerce are included in the same
grant. Congress has, from the beginning,
regulated commerce between the States,
and by the same methods it has adopted
for regulating commerce with foreign ma
tons. All the laws relating to the coasting
trade, for example, are regulations Of COM
merce between the States. Could anybody
possibly be so wild as to contend that
Congress has authority to prescribe
a maximum rate of freight for coasting
vessels plying between New York
and Charleston But the constitu-
ton gives Congress Just as much au-
thority to do this as it does to prescribe a
maximum rate by rail between the same
two cities.
1t makes no difference in point of consti-
tutional authority whether the route be by
land or by water, or whether the lines OF
transportation run north and south or run
east and west. viii anybody undertake to
maintain that Congress may prescribe
freight charges between Chicago and Buff
falo on the great lakes? Or between Buff.
fal and Albany on the Erie Canal? Now,
by what sort of logic, or what kind of con-
stitutional reasoning, will it be proved that
the power to regulate commerce between
the States includes the right to fix the
price of freight between Chicago and New
York by the land routes, and not by the
water routes2 The lakes and canals are the
most important of all the lines of transpor
tation between the West and the East, anC
on the lakes Congress would not interfere
with the jurisdiction of the States. If Con
gress possesses the right to regulate freight
at all.it surely must possess it on our grea
lakes, great rivers, and other navigabl
waters where its jurisdiction is exclusive
We suggest TO this sapient committee tina
it bring bill fixing schedule of freight
for the coasting trade, and see what tn,
country will say to it, And then we ad
wise it to try if can insert its metaphysi
cal scissors between transportation by lan'
and transportation by water, and separate
the constitutional power which applies t
the one from that which relates to tn
other. There is no such dividing line
there is no stopping place in the Constitu
ton between prescribing the price offreight
between New York and Philadelphia b.
rail and prescribing the price of freight
between New York and Liverpool by wa
ter, If the grant of power to regulat
commerce includes one, it includes both
since it is the very same grant in the YER
same language.
Even if the fatal constitutional objection
could be got over and the power were con
ceded, a regulation of the price of throug
freights between the West and the Eas
would not afford the relief asked for by tn
farmers, The oppression they chiefly com
plain of is that practiced within their ow
States, which makes it in some cases NOR
expensive to get their grain conveyed t
the great shipping points than all the res
of the way to New York. Between tn
great Western grain marts and the Attain
ic seaboard, freights are kept down by cen
petition, especially during the season
navigation but within the States there
generally no choice of routes, and it
where the railroads possess this local mono
poly that they practice their worst ez
tortions. We have long had some faint ez
perience of the same thing in our ow
State There has hardly been a session {
the New York Legislature for the las
twenty years which has not been besiege
by clamorous petitioners for pro rat
freight hill, founded on complaints tn,
the Central Railroad charges higher loo
freights for short distances within the Sta
than it receives for transporting goo,
through the whole length of its road, thu
oding business more cheaply for the pc
pie of the West than for our own citize
who live along its route. The hand of
cal extortion has been laid more heavi
on the people of the West, and the chi
Ii n