Elk City mining news. (Elk City, Idaho) 1903-1913, 1908-04-04
I7SCONTROLLIMITED
IMPORTANT DECISION FROM
INTERSTATE Commission.
Says They Have no Jurisdiction Over
Oceans Traffic from This Country
to Any Foreign Ports---Different Com.
panies Can Pool Traffic and Commits.
sion Cannot Interfere

decision has been promulgated
by the interstate commerce commits
sion in one of the most important
cases it has been called upon to de-
termine for some time 1t is that of
the Cosmopolitan Importing company,
Philadelphia organization, chartered
under the laws of New Jersey against
the Hamburg American Packet COM
pany the North German Lloyd Steam
ship company, the Wilson lines, and
the Observation-Disclosures lines.
The complainant's petition was filed
with the commission nearly year ago.
Some time subsequently the defend
ants filed a demurrer, attacking the
jurisdiction of the interstate commerce
commission. The opinion in the case.
which is very voluminous was pre-
pared by Commissioner Franklin K.
Lane.
In brief, and in effect, the commits
sion decided against itself 1t holds
that it has no authority over oceanic
transportation and this determines the
case adversely to the contention of
the complainant.
In this case the complainant alleged
that the defendant steamship COM
pan1es transport traffic under the bills
of lading between inland points of the
United States and foreign ports, and
are thereby subjected to the jurisdic-
ton of the commission; that defend
ants have made an arrangement for
the pooling of eastbound export traf-
fic maintained by rail to Atlantic
ports and thence by steamship lines
to points in Denmark, Sweden, Nor
way, Finland and German ports in
the Baltic, and that this so-called
Baltic pool arbitrarily determines
the ultimate rates from such inland
points of the United States to such
foreign ports, the North Atlantic
ports; and that the Hamburg-American
Packet company maintains monopoly
of westbound and eastbound traffic
forwarded on local and on through
. bills of lading between Germany and
other continental countries and inland
cities OF the United States
The prayer of the petition is that the
commission declare the Baltic pool
to be an illegal pooling of freights un-
the monopoly of the Hamburg Ameri-
can Packet company be declared un-
lawful and that relief be granted to
the complainant, which is also a trans
Atlantic steamship company doing a
freight business between American
and continental ports
Lane Explains Decision.
In his discussion of few of the
reasons for the commissions decision
Mr.. Lane says:
The commission may regulate in
tersRte traffic, whether by rail or by
combined rail and water route, from
point of receipt to point of delivery;
( but the commission in it's control over
foreign commerce is limited to the
regulation of such traffic. whether by
rail or by a combination of rail and
water carriers, from and to the points
of transshipment.
'The pooling of traffic by water
carriers is plainly matter over which
the commission has no jurisdiction
"A rail carrier may control, and con-
meet with line of steamships engaged
in foreign commerce, with which it
may interchange business as freely as
with another rail carrier, and it may
quote combination rate for the
through movement, the agents of the
railroad company acting as the agent
of the steamship company in so doing"