The Roswell daily record. [volume] (Roswell, N.M.) 1903-current, 1907-06-25

vent any use OF ACT mat Will lQI6rq6fe
with congressional control over inter
state commerce, Or that will Injurious
ly aHec such commerce. Congress
may likewise prevent the arteries OF
interstate from being en-
ployed as cOnduits for articles hurtful
to the public health, safety or morals,
and may remove distractions from the
highways of commerce whether they
be physical or economic, whether they
may be sand bars, mobs or monopo
lies.
The power of Congress may be exer-
cised by prohibition and by prescrip-
ton.
Congress has prohibited combina-
tons in restraint of interstate and for
eigl rad and has prohibited the car
riage of diseased cattle, explosives
and lottery tickets, and Congress has
prescribed that certain safety appli-
ances shall be used upon railroads
doing an interstate business. The one
class of avs is designed to keep the
channels of m free and unpol-
luted; the other is designed to secure
the safety of the employees and pa
irons of the carriers.
l cite these acts because their consti
nationality has been sustained, be-
cause they obviously bear directly up
on commerce and for that reason will
serve to make clear the distinction
between the well established rule to
be deduced from the decided cases and
the extension of the rule involved in
certain pending legislative PROPOSE
lions of Federal control, to which l
shall now direct your attention.
First, l snail restate the existing
rule, as it has been j~udicially determ-
80 = hn-
the power to regulate interstate COM
merce, which includes h power to
regulate the means or instrumental
ties by which is conducted.
The new proposition is this: Con
gress mas the power to regulate com
merce including it's instrumentalities,
and likewise power to regulate the
persons by whom articles of commerce
are produced in respect to matters dis
connected with commerce.
This addition to the rule finds ex-
preston in the suggestion to prohibit
the interstate transportation of i1ocu-
Gus articles lawfully made or produc-
ed in a State for reasons not affecting
interstate commerce.
Let us now consider whether h re-
gulation of the business of producing
articles which may in whole or in
part go into interstate commerce for
reasons not affecting such commerce,
is a regulation of commerce. In other
words, is the mere production of goods
commerce.? If it is not, then can Con-
gress regulate sucn production within
a State under the constitutional pow
er to regulate interstate commerce?
1t would be difficult to overstate the
Importance n seriousness of the
question thus presented, as upon, its
ultimate authoritative determination
depends. it may be, the autonomy of
the State in substantially all matters
of internal police.
1t is scarcely worth while to discuss
the proposition that production is not
commerce.
Mr.. Justice Lamar remarked in Kidd
VS.. Pearson, 12S U. s.:
mo distinction is more popular to
the common mind or more clearly
pressed in economic and political lite
nature, than that between manufacture
and commerce. Manufacture is trans
formation-the fashioning of raw ma
terials into a change of form for use.
The functions of are diff
erent. The buying and selling a1d the
transportation incidental thereto con-
stitute and h regulation
of in the constitutional
sense embraces the regulation as last
of transportation. If it be held that
the term includes the regulation of
all such manufactures as are intended
to be the subject of commercial tran
sactiol in the future, it is impossible
to deny that it would also include all
productive industries that contemplate
the same thing. The result would be
that Congress would be invested, to
the exclusion of the States, with he
power to regulate, not only manufac-
lures, but also agriculture, horticul-
ture, stock raising, domestic fisheries
mining-in short, every branch of hui
man industry. For is there one of
them that does not contemplate,
or less clearly, an interstate or foreign
market? Does not the wheat grower
of the Northwest Or the cotton plant
er of the South, plant cultivate, n
harvest his crop with an eye on the
prices at Liverpool, New York and
Chicago? The power being vested in
Congress and denied to the States. it
would follow as an inevitable result
that the duty would devolve OF Con-
gress to regulate all of these delicate
multiform and vital interests-inter-
ests which in their nature are and
must be local in all the details of their
successful management"
Ia Veazie VS.. Moore, IA How, STA.
the Court said:
1.-The phrase ito regulate commerce
can never be applied to transactions
wholly internal between citizens of
the same community, or to a polity
and laws whose ends and purposes
and operations are restricted to the
territory soil INT jurisdiction of
such community. Nor can it be pro-
perly concluded, that. because the pro-
ducts of domestic enterprise in agri-
culture or manufactures, or in the arts
may ultimately become h subjects
of foreign commerce, that the control
of the means or the encouragements
by which enterprise is fostered and
protected. is legitimately within h
import of the phrase foreign commerce
or fairly implied in any invest1ture of
the power to regulate such comA
merce A ~pretension as far reaching
as this, would extend to contracts be-
tween citizen and citizen of the same
State. would control the pursuits of
the planter, the grazier, the manufac-
turer, the mechanic, the mmens op-
erations of the golfers and mines and
furnaces of the country. for there is
not one of these avocations, the re-
suits of which may not become the