The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-05-04

l gave that clause. and for the purpose of enforcing which prohibitions these
 suits were brought.
 What the Act Enforces.
 "As the construction which the gov
 ernment placed upon the act and seeks
 to enforce is now held 10 be unsound as none of the contentious relied upon l is applicable to the act as now con 1 strued, because under such construction i the act merely enforced a regulation of 1 commerce by which carriers are com pelled to disassociate themselves from
 the products which they carry and does not prohibit where the carrier is not associated with the commodity carried | it follows that the contentious on the
 subject of the fifth amendment are
 without merit.
 "4. The exemption as to timber, etc.
 contained in the clause Is not repug-
 nant to the constitution.
 "5. The provision as to the penalties l is separable from the other provisions of the act. As no recovery of penalties 1 was prayed, no issue concerning them | is here presented. It will be time
 enough to consider whether the right 1 to recover penalties exists when an at-
 tempt to collect penalties is made. "6. As the construction which the government gave to the act and which l it was the purpose of those suits to , enforce, 1t is held that 1t is not nee- essary in reverting and remanding to ] direct the character of decrees which l shall be entered, but simply to reverse and remand the case with directions to
 enforce and apply the statute as 1t is
 now construed.
 "7. As the Delaware and Hudson company is engaged as a common car
 rier by rail in the transportation of l coal in the channels of interstate com
 merce, it is a railroad company within 1 the purview of the commodities clause and is subject to the provisions of that l clause as they are now construed"
 Whites Reasons. In addition to his summary of the results of the courts holding, Justice
 White in his opinion entered some
 what into the reasons for the decis 1 ion.
 Because of the gravity of the con- stitutional questions involved we hold that our duty Is to unify them in such a way that the prohibitions as to pro-
 duction and manufacture shall speak in the same tense as the prohibitions against the ownership and tn herefore we hold that this statute ordainS- +l>2t car riers who manufacture mine or pro- duce, or who own or hold in whole or 1 in part or who are interested directly or indirectly in the commodities before the act of transportation must in good faith disassociate themselves from the property so that duty of the carrier may not conflict with their duty" Taking up the governments conten 1 tion that the words in the law direct or indirect interest" make it applicable to the ownership of stock in producing companies, Justice White said: '"The trouble about that is that it has 1 been decided in this court that ownership 1 of stock In a corporation does not make the owners of the stock the legal owner of the property of the corporation It does not give him legal standing as re- spects interest in the property of the cor poration in which he holds the stock.
 Untenable Argument.
 Tt is said that ownership of stock in
 the corporation was in the mind of Con- l gress and therefore We should read the act according to the subject to which the mind of Congress was directed, disre-
 garding it's legal significance and regard ing those things which were excluded from it and interpret it according to 1 our supposed assumption with respect to
 that which was demanded of Congress.
 That argument is not tenable, because if the mind of the lawmal1er was concen- trated on the addition of this statute,
 under the provision then, the obvious and plain duty was to discuss it, not by vague and general expression which | excludes the stock ownership in its legal | terms, because the judicial mind cannot l contemplate that which was excluded and 1 by construing it to mean that which in l its legal sense has been settled by this | court"
 He dwelt at some length on the effect l of the provision excepting timber from the operation of the law, but reached the | conclusion that the provision was not dis 1 criminative.
 General View. Speaking in general terms, Justice White said:
 We hold that the act does none of the things, rightly construed, for which the government contends; that the act, when you rightfully construe it, is a mere regulation for disassociation from
 the products which are carried and in no way connected with the vast and exten- sive prohibitions for which the govern ment contends. and, therefore, in no way lends itself either to any of the argu- ments respecting inconvenience, suggest ed at bar, or any of the considerations which led the lower court to hold that it did. Taking that view of the act, our conclusion is that the court below erred In holding the act unconstitutional be- cause the act does none of the things
 which 1t supposed it did, and that the
 act, restricted to it's natural intent and it's plain opinion could not possibly bring about the results stated even from a legal point of view. Reaching that con- cusion we think that 1t is wholly un- necessary in the judgment which we rem der, to touch upon those matters, because as the decree which we render is predi- cated upon the construction which we give the statute and is so widely and wholly different from the construction which the government relies upon, our decree is a reversal with a direction to the lower court to apply to the statue the meaning and significance which we att tribute to it. which I have said, is wholly distinct from the meaning which the government insists it was entitled to have"
 There was but one dissenting opinion.
 It was by Justice Harlan and was very brief He said
 "In my judgment the act, reasonably and properly construed, according to it's language, includes within its prohibitions any railroad companies transporting ar ticles or commodities if at the time 1t legally or eduitaby owns stock-certainly if it so owns majority of all the stock in the company that mined, manufac- tured or produced the articles or com modities being transported by such rail- road company"
 
 Earl Gregg Will Stay in Office.
 Ottawa, Ontario May 3.-Earl Grey,