The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-03-01


pedient. legitimate or Illegal. Having
enacted the immortality or inexpediency o.
illegality of this or that article of inter
state commerce Congress may proceed to
prohibit absolutely any traffic between the
States in that article. In illustration of
this view the Sun enumerates several sup
posititious laws of an extreme nature which
Congress might pass under this construc-
ton of the Constitution. Following are
some of them:
A law prohibiting any person from cross
ing the line between one State and another;
providing future Congress OF philosophers
should in its wisdom enact law to keep
citizens az home for the purpose, let US sup
pose, of preventing citizens of Connecticut
or New Jersey from coming TO New YORK
TO practice the professions or to do bust
ness here in competition with the citizens
of New York. A law closing TO trafr1c
every ferry line across the lower Hudson
and across the Delaware at Philadelphia
If Congress should decide that ferries to
great cities promote immortality.
1t is hardly worth while to attribute pre-
pect it of absolute idiocy.
The law of 1896 provides that any person
who shall cause to be brought within the
United States from abroad for the purpose
of disposing of the same or carried from
one State to another in the United States
any paper, certificate or instrument pur-
porting to be or representing ticket.
chance, share or interest in or dependent
upon the event of lottery shall be pun
ishable, etc. Congress did not declare its
motive for passing this law and did not
have to. 1t simply enacted that lottery
tickets should not be brought into the
United States from abroad nor be carried
or shipped from one State to another. 1t
treated lottery tickets an article of
traffic. and therefore coming under the gen.
eral head of commerce. The provision of
the Constitution which gives Congress pow
er to regulate commerce among the several
States covers every imaginable kind of
commerce. including the traffic in lottery
tickets among the rest. The Supreme Court
did not inquire as to the motive of Con-
necessity for it or the wisdom of it. The
sole question before the court was whether
under the Constitution Congress had the
same power to regulate interstate COM
merce in lottery tickets that it had to regu-
late any and all other kinds of interstate
commerce. The court held that it had. and
that the unqualified power to regulate in
cluded the power to prohibit. Justice Har-
Ian stated the point very clearly in sum-
ming up. He said:
We decide nothing more in the present
case than that lottery tickets are subjects
of traffic among those who choose to sell
or buy them: that the carriage of such
tickets by independent carriers from one
State to another is, therefore, interstate
commerce; that under its power to regulate
commerce among the several States Con-
gress-subject to the limitations imposed by
the Constitution upon the exercise of the
powers granted-has plenary authority over
such commerce and may prohibit the car
riage Of such tickets from State to State,
and that legislation TO that end and of that
character is not inconsistent with any linn
itation or restriction imposed upon the ex-
ercise of the powers granted to Congress.
This does not give Congress any new pow
er nor power to interfere with any per-
sons personal liberty or inalienable rights
1t simply declares that the clause in the
| Constitution which gives Congress power
| to regulate commerce among the States
| means exactly what 1t says. 1t follows
of course, that it means that Congress
| may. if it sees fit, regulate or prohibit in
| terstate commerce in any article whatever
or in the products of any trust. This is a
| large power, but the Constitution gives
Congress other large powers. Thus far they
have never been exercised except for the
| public welfare, and there is no reason TO be-
| lieve or fear that they ever will be.