Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/141/47/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 16:29:17+00:00

Document:
We do not think that the difficulty is at all obviated by the fact that the express company, as incidental to its main business, which is to carry goods between different states, does also some local business by carrying goods from one point to another within the State of Kentucky. This is probably quite as much for the accommodation of the people of that state as for the advantage of the company. But whether so or not, it does not obviate the objection that the regulations as to license and capital stock are imposed as conditions on the company's carrying on the business of interstate commerce, which was manifestly the principal object of its organization. These regulations are clearly a burden and a restriction upon that commerce. Whether intended as such or not, they operate as such. But taxes or license fees, in good faith imposed exclusively on express business carried on wholly within the state, would be open to no such objection. The case is entirely different from that of foreign corporations seeking to do a business which does not belong to the regulating power of Congress. The insurance business, for example, cannot be carried on in a state by a foreign corporation without complying with all the conditions imposed by the legislation of that state. So with regard to manufacturing corporations, and all other corporations whose business is of a local and domestic nature, which would include express companies whose business is confined to points and places wholly within the state. The cases to this effect are numerous. Bank of Augusta v. Earle, 13 Pet. 519; Paul v. Virginia, 8 Wall. 168; Liverpool Insurance Company v. Massachusetts, 10 Wall. 566; Cooper Manufacturing Company v. Ferguson, 113 U. S. 727; Phila. Fire Association v. New York, 119 U. S. 110.
But while it is only such things as are clearly injurious to the lives and health of the people that are placed beyond the protection of the commercial power of Congress, yet when that power, or some other exclusive power of the federal government, is not in question, the police power of the state extends to almost everything within its borders -- to the suppression of nuisances; to the prohibition of manufactures deemed injurious to the public health; to the prohibition of intoxicating drinks, their manufacture or sale; to the prohibition of lotteries, gambling, horse racing, or anything else that the legislature may deem opposed to the public welfare. Bartemeyer v. Iowa, 18 Wall. 129; Beer Company v. Massachusetts, 97 U. S. 25; Fertilizing Co. v. Hyde Park, 97 U. S. 659; Stone v. Mississippi, 101 U. S. 814; Foster v. Kansas, 112 U. S. 201; Mugler v. Kansas, 123 U. S. 623; Powell v. Pennsylvania, 127 U. S. 678; Kidd v. Pearson, 128 U. S. 1; Kimmish v. Ball, 129 U. S. 217. It is also within the undoubted province of the state legislature to make regulations with regard to the speed of railroad trains in the neighborhood of cities and towns; with regard to the precautions to be taken in the approach of such trains to bridges, tunnels, deep cuts, and sharp curves; and generally with regard to all operations in which the lives and health of people may be endangered -- even though such regulations affect to some extent the operations of interstate commerce. Such regulations are eminently local in their character, and, in the absence of congressional regulations over the same subject, are free from all constitutional objections, and unquestionably valid.

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