Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/219/486
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 00:29:50+00:00

Document:
Messrs. E. C. Field and H. R. Kurrio for appellant.
The Attorney General and Mr. Barton Corneau for appellee.
The present suit was brought by the United States under that statute against the Chicago, Indianapolis, & Louisville Railway Company, a corporation of Indiana which operated the lines of railroad known as the Monon Route, and extending from Chicago through Indiana to Cincinnati, and from Michigan City, Indina, to Louisville, Kentucky. The railway company was engaged in the business of carrying passengers over the above lines.
'Agreement between the Monon Route (Chicago, Indianapolis, & Louisville Railway Company) and $059 Frank A Munsey Company publisher. Entered into this 24 day of January, 1907.
'Whereas, the said publisher issues Munsey's Magazine a publication, published at New York City, New York, Chicago office 423 Marquette Building, and which has a regular circulation of 643,000 each issue.
'1st. The said publisher agrees to publish in said publication an advertisement of the Monon Route as follows: One page 'ad' (divided as desired) said advertisement to appear Favorably, and occupy a space of not less than one page and to be published as desired issues of said publication.
'2d. In full consideration of the foregoing advertising, the Monon Route agrees to issue the following nontransferable transportation based on regular published rate: Trip tickets or mileage To the value of Five hundred Dollars ($500 ) for the personal use of the publisher, his employees or immediate members of his or their families, which said transportation shall be limited for use not later than December 31, 1907.
'3d. Under no circumstances must the transportation issued under this contract be sold or transferred to or used by any other than the person to whom issued, as such sale, transfer, or use would be a misdemeanor under the law.
The petition also alleged that after that contract was entered into, and previous to April 3d, 1907, the defendant railway company, pursuant to the above contract, transported over its railway from points in one state to points in other states, the employees of the Munsey Company upon trip and mileage tickets issued for their benefit.
That the above contracts between the railway company and the publishers of magazines and newspapers are in violation of the act of Congress regulating commerce, particularly §§ 2 and 6, and also § 3 of the above act, approved February 19th, 1903, in this: that those contracts require the furnishing of interstate transportation at rates which, in each instance, 'are less than and different' from the rates contemporaneously exacted from the general public under substantially similar circumstances and conditions.
The answer further avers that all the company's corporate powers as a common carrier are derived from an Indiana statute which prohibits the railway company from giving free tickets, free passes, or free transportation, but which, in express words, authorizes the company to issue transportation in payment for printing and advertising. It denied that the purchase of advertising space by a common carrier constituted any part of interstate commerce, or that Congress has any constitutional power to prohibit it from doing so.
The circuit court heard the case upon the pleadings and proofs, and adjudged that the acts of the railway company, as alleged in the petition, were sustained by the evidence (as they undoubtedly were), and were in violation of the commerce act of February 4th, 1887 24 Stat. at L. 379, chap. 104, U. S. Comp. Stat. 1901, p. 3154, of the act further to regulate commerce approved February 19th, 1903, and of the acts amendatory thereof.
1. The decisive question in this case is whether the contract between the railway company and the Munsey Company is repugnant to the acts of Congress regulating commerce. In other words, could the company, in return for the transportation which it agreed to furnish and did furnish to the Munsey publisher over its interstate lines, and to his employees and to the immediate members of his and their families, accept as compensation for such service anything else than money, the amount to be determined by its published schedule of rates and charges? Upon the authority of Louisville & N. R. Co. v. Mottley (just decided) 219 U. S. 467, 55 L. ed. , 31 Sup. Ct. Rep. 265, and according to the principles announced in the opinion in that case, the answer to the above question must be in the negative. The acceptance by the railway company of advertising, not of money, in payment of the interstate transportation furnished to the publisher of the Munsey magazine, his employees and the immediate members of his and their families, was, for the reasons given in the Mottley Case, in violation of the commerce act. The facts in the present case show how easily, under any other rule, the act can be evaded and the object of Congress entirely defeated. The legislative department intended that all who obtained transportation on interstate lines should be treated alike in the matter of rates, and that all who availed themselves of the services of the railway company (with certain specified exceptions) should be on a plane of equality. Those ends cannot be met otherwise than by requiring transportation to be paid for in money, which has a certain value, known to all, and not in commodities or services, or otherwise than in money.
2. We need say but little about the Indiana statute upon which the defense is in part based. The transactions in respect of which the government seeks relief, being interstate in their character, the acts of Congress as to such transactions are paramount. No state enactment can be of any avail when the subject of such transactions has been covered by an act of Congress, acting within the limits of its constitutional powers. It has long been settled that when an 'act of the legislature of a state prescribes a regulation of the subject repugnant to and inconsistent with the regulation of Congress, the state law must give way, and this without regard to the source of power whence the state legislature derived its enactment.' Sinnot v. Davenport, 22 How. 227, 243, 16 L. ed. 243, 247; Missouri, K. & T. R. Co. v. Haber, 169 U. S. 613, 626, 42 L. ed. 878, 882, 18 Sup. Ct. Rep. 488; Reid v. Colorado, 187 U. S. 137, 47 L. ed. 108, 23 Sup. Ct. Rep. 92, 12 Am. Crim. Rep. 506. This results, Chief Justice Marshall said in Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat, 1, 6 L. ed. 23, as well from the nature of the government as from the words of the Constitution.
U. S. Comp. St. Supp. 1909, p. 1138.
U. S. Comp. St. Supp. 1909, p. 1149.

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