The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-09-04
REPORT OF GUNTER FAVORS RAILROAD Opinion in Rate Case of South and North Ala
 bama Railroad

Montgomery. September 3.-Cspecial.)-A second report filed with Federal Judge Thomas G. Jones by Special Master Will liam A. Gunter, appointed to take evi- dence in the celebrated railroad rate case declares the Alabama rate statutes to be unconstitutional, and bears out the contention of the railroads against the state The special masters second re- port has been filed in the case of the South and North Alabama Railroad com pany vs. the state of Alabama, and is in many respects similar to his report in the case of the Louisville and Nashville roaG vs. the state, filed with Judge Jones on Friday.
 Special Master Gunter claims that the state statutes are violative of the fed cral constitution, both as to the 110 com nodties law and the 212 cent passenger rate law. in that the federal law fixes tlee units for transportation of passengers anI freight In his report the special master claims that the state has no power to require or insist that intrastate ser vice she uld be rendered on a different scale from those fixed by the federal law, az this would be violative of the fourteenth amendment to the constitu- tior.
 The state has no authority to prescibe rates on interstate lines of commerce. 'by Congress for like service, for all dis tances and for all qualities.
 The second report of Special Master Gunter is as comprehensive as his first, and is substantially a victory for the railroads. The last two sections of the report, in which the views of the spe- cial master are succinctly given, are as follows:
 When Congress in its supreme power fixed the relations of service in trans portation of passengers and freight, for all distances and all quantities, as it does in all schedules, and the, compensa- tion or value of such services, 1t hereby fixes and determines the property right relation between such transportation and the value and compensation therefor. In other words, it defines the units of ser vice, and fixes the value of such units wherever called into requisition.
 AS the intrastate service has no char acteristics peculiar to itself making the value of transportation different from the same transportation in interstate ser vice, there would be no power to require or insist that intrastate service should be rendered on a schedule of values diff ferent from that fixed by the supreme power as to true relation between service and compensation. It would be violative of the fourteenth amendment of the con stitution to do so
 By the common law there could be no unjust discrimination by carriers. Under the commerce clause of the con stitution, Congress is invested with the supreme power and duty of regulating commerce among the several states.
 ''The growth and development of the vast internal commerce of the United States by new means of transportation, unthought of by the makers of the con stitution, has proceeded upon. and is founded on, the natural equity of the common law that every ton and passen- ger transported should contribute and pay the pro rata charge due to the car rier for each particular service. All interstate lines of transportation are in- strumentalities in the conduct of inter- state traffic, and it is certainly within the power and duty of Congress to see and to prescribe that all transportation on such lines shall be on a unit scale, alone unjust discrimination can be avoided between persons and locali- ties, and the interstate commerce itself preserved.
 Hence there is no power in the states to prescribe rates on interstate lines of commerce, variant from the unit service scale determined by Congress for like service and for all distances and all quan- titles"