Court Opinion

ID: 9810802
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 21:59:42.4535+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:40:13.982312
License: Public Domain

GuaeK, O. J.,
concurring: When it was laid down by the Supreme Court of the United States in the “Slaughter House Gases ” and cases *34based thereon, that the states had the fullest right to supervise the operation of corporations and regulate their rates, charges, and conduct, it made a great change in the conception of the powers of the Government and the subordination of corporations to control. The case now before the Court is second in importance probably to none that has come before us, for it recognizes to the fullest extent the power and the duty of the State to regulate and control the conduct and the charges of water-power companies as fully as this has been applied to railroad companies and others. In some respects it is even, if possible, more important to regulate the charges of these companies and their conduct than that of the railroad companies or any others.
In view of the fact that the coal mines will be exhausted in comparatively a few years, it is of the utmost importance that the powers and rights and the extent of the Government control of substitutes for coal power shall be fully and explicitly stated.
1. If this were not done, it would be in the power of. great corporations of this kind, by consolidation or joint action, to tengross the entire supply of electricity derived from water power, and by discrimination in rates, absorb and take over the entire cotton-mill industry, and, indeed, ultimately, all the railroads and all other industrial plants.
2. Already it has come to universal knowledge that water-power companies, exercising in lieu and in the stead of the sovereign the power of eminent domain, are taking possession of the homes, the fields, and the ancestral holdings of the people along the rivers and creeks and the valleys at will for impounding water thereon for their own purposes. If this can be done without limit, they will xDOSsess a power greater than any king, and will arouse by arbitrary action an intensity of feeling which this country has not yet seen. It is absolutely necessary that the full power of the State and the Government be exercised so that the condemnation for these purposes by gigantic combinations of wealth shall not be arbitrary, and that the humblest owner of a home shall not be evicted in any case because he is unable to cope with the ruthless power of unlimited wealth. Already in California and South Dakota the limitation set is that the State is, and must continue to be, the sole owner of all water power, the operation of which to be not only under the regulation but under lease from the State.
3. A further consideration is that with the steadily growing demand of the Federal Government and of the State for greater revenues, and that in this State by the elimination by statute of the ad valorem tax on the money “invested in stocks and bonds” which the Constitution requires, Const., Art. V, sec. 3, and the impossibility of deriving more revenue from an ad valorem tax upon other property already so heavily burdened, it is absolutely necessary that there shall be new sources of revenue.
*35In a recent unanimous decision by the United States Supreme Court in Heisler v. Colliery Co., filed 27 November, 1922, it was held that the Pennsylvania statute was constitutional which laid a tax of 1% per, cent on the value of all anthracite coal at the mine ready for shipment.
In Alabama there is a tonnage tax of 2 cents a ton on coal.
In Louisiana there is a “severance” tax of 2 per cent on the value of all timbers cut and minerals mined, from which.the state derives two million dollars yearly.
In Minnesota there is an “occupation” tax of 6 per cent on the value of all ores mined which bring into the state treasury about two millions a year.
In Texas there is a “gross production” tax of 1% per cent on all petroleum produced, which yields that state about five million a year.
In Oklahoma there is a “gross production” tax of one-half of one per cent on ores and three per cent on oil and gas, which brings into the treasury of that state eight million dollars a year. All the above forms of taxation are validated by the decision in the Heisler case, supra.
These taxes go far to assert that the coal and oil which are placed in the ground by Nature are not susceptible of private ownership except by public forbearance, and that in fact they are the property of the whole people, operated in private hands upon a small rent in the nature of a tax. But at any rate the assertion of this power over them opens up a new source of revenue to the state which can thus be drawn from the same source from which so many gigantic fortunes have been built— vast sums which might have gone into the public treasuries. The tax now laid on these indicate that the extent of the control of these properties and public utilities rests with the public and not with those who exploit these vast sources of revenue.
For a greater and a stronger reason, the streams, whether large or small, which are created by the showers which come down from on high, and which when they become navigable can become the property of no individual or corporation, but belong solely to the public to be operated under its control, these streams when they are smaller are equally the property of the whole people. The power generated from them and the extent to which those who appropriate them can impound the waters and cover against the will of the owners the homes and homesteads of the people is a matter of overwhelming public importance. The power to stay the will of 'those who would cover the surface with impounded water and use the electricity generated from this source which comes from the skies should be absolutely controlled by statute and regulated by the representatives of the people. At present there must be asserted at least a strict limitation upon the extent to which the exercise of the power of eminent domain by these corporations over private property shall be *36permitted, and there must be the strictest control which shall prevent any discrimination by them in rates and all excessive charges. Besides, the decisions are uniform that no state can confer the right of eminent domain upon a corporation incorporated by another state. 20 Corpus Juris, 542; 10 R. C. L., 197, note 18; Staton v. R. R., 144 N. C., 145; R. R. v. Spencer, 166 N. C., 522; Brown v. Jackson, 179 N. C., 365.
Beyond and above limitation by law as to all profits to individuals and to corporations, there must be the strict guardianship by the State outlined by statute, and in force by judicial and administrative officials, to protect for public use the bounty of heaven, whether folded in the recesses of the earth laid up from countless ages for the benefit of future generations of men, or created by the waters falling from the skies from which power is made for the necessities of men.
In this case, the inevitable and ultimate result of combination is not presented, nor the fact that small revenue is as yet derived by the State from this source, but we have before us the absolute necessity of restriction upon the gains that the owners of such property shall be permitted to receive, and of a denial of their right to discriminate which would inevitably bring all industrial plants and corporations into the control of some consolidated trust based upon the unified ownership of such motive power.
On the question of evidence, it would seem clear that in determining the reasonableness of the rate .to be fixed in this case by the jury they may consider the rates charged by this defendant to other like consumers in the State of South Carolina under the same or substantially similar conditions. Such evidence is not controlling, but the jury have the right to consider it in passing upon the question whether the rates claimed by the plaintiff are reasonable.