Court Opinion

ID: 9694027
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 17:19:11.629048+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:54.600094
License: Public Domain

VAN VALKENBURGH,
Circuit Judge (concurring).
I agree with the decision to dismiss the bills, but I feel impelled to add some additional views with respect to some features of the findings made by the Secretary of Agriculture in reaching the conclusions leading to his order.
The reason, or at least the main reason, for the difference between petitioners and Secretary, lies in the matter of cost allowances and reasonable return to owners of the business. As stated by counsel for the Secretary, the substantive questions are:
1. Are the Secretary’s findings of reasonable costs plus reasonable profits supported by the evidence?
2. Will the prescribed rate schedule produce sufficient revenue to cover the reasonable costs plus reasonable profits as found by the Secretary?
I think we may regard the entire controversy as resolved by an answer to the first of these questions, because the second is practically conceded, the insistence being that the Secretary’s allowance of costs is unreasonable and, therefore, that the resulting profits are so unreasonable as to amount to confiscation.
To my mind, basing the allowance of salaries upon the potential ability of a salesman to sell a given number of carloads in a year is too restrictive. Such ability is not subject to bare mathematical measure. One even casually familiar with stockyard operations knows that an efficient salesman must be a man of sound judgment and experience. His duties in fostering the business of the producer, in causing his product to be reared and brought to sale under favorable market conditions, are of great value and axe not subject to mathematical percentage measurement. The stock does not come in such regular periods as to pérmit a fixed amount of sales, ratably distributed over the market year. When it does come, it must be attended to by expert and experienced men to the best advantage of the grower. It is evident, therefore, that an organization must be kept sufficient to handle the business as it is presented. Such employees must be permanent for this purpose. Capable men cannot be picked up at will. They must have a steady job, and at a wage that will reasonably compensate for the experience they bring and the service they perform. In this period, when it is emphasized that labor must receive a fitting reward, it will not do to visit upon the stoekyards agencies, which are recognized as necessary to the commerce, too great a burden because of depression in the stock business. In their zeal to aid the stock raiser, government agencies must not forget the men who are essential to the making of his market. This applies in a lesser degree perhaps to yardmen and others employed in the business. It is to be emphasized that, if a market agency is to do business at all, it must have and maintain an organization sufficient to handle its business when it comes. An examination of record and briefs indicates that in various ways the agencies have striven to keep costs down. Obviously it was to their interest to do so in years lean at the *772best. Their judgment as to their necessities should not be lightly set aside nor underestimated.
So with respect to getting and maintaining business. Certainly a considerable amount of advertising, circularizing, and personal contact is proper and necessary to keep this market prominently before the raisers and shippers óf stock in this normal trade territory. The market agencies have to compete with other stock markets, with eo-operatives, a percentage of whose profits go back to their members, with packers, and railroad yards, and with direct buyers generally. The fact that there may incidentally result competition between the agencies themselves is no sufficient ground for reducing the costs of such activities to an extremely narrow compass. Also, if such agencies are to continue, the owners, as they are termed, must be allowed to receive a return commensurate with the contribution they make to the success of this market and the risks they assume.
I do not undertake to decide that the costs demanded by petitioners may not in some degree be excessive. Of course, even the most efficient operators cannot expect to make as much out of a small volume of business as out of one much larger; but they must be prepared for any reasonable eventuality, and the return fixed must not he so low as to drive too many of these agencies out of business, to the great injury of this stock market, and, necessarily, to the shippers of stock, who would most conveniently patronize it. What the future volume of business may be is, of course, speculative, and should not be a controlling rate-making factor. The evidence is that the volume is decreasing during the periods under test. It appears that the order of the Secretary would reduce the number of men employed in handling the 1931 market from 188 to about 79. There were only fifty-nine firms originally petitioning. Nine are said to have retired from business, and, from the evidence before us, a number of others will necessarily follow.
It is true that no reasonable rate can be expected to protect all who may elect to engage in this quasi-public business, without regard to prevailing conditions; but the protection of the market against lowering an irreducible minimum is as necessary to the public interests as it is to that of the stock shippers themselves.
My reaction to the presentation made is that I should have made a more liberal allowance for costs and owner return—not necessarily as great as that demanded by petitioners, and, of course, with due regard to the number of owners accredited to each firm. Five owners in the same firm cannot each expect to receive the maximum accredited or appraised to one. But it is to be observed that the Secretary has given consideration to all the elements essential to the computation of a general rate of this nature. By the statute he is given almost dictatorial power in the establishment of such rates, provided he gives due consideration to all the elements involved, does not depart from any rule of law, and provided, further, the rates established are not clearly unreasonable and' confiscatory.
Just what would be the result of applying those rates to future business upon a reasonable cost basis, or as found by the Secretary, cannot be known, because it has not yet been tried. We cannot bring to the complex conditions involved the same expert judgment as is employed by what the Supreme Court has described as “a tribunal appointed by law and informed by experience.” And we are forbidden to question the soundness of the reasoning, or the wisdom of the conclusions reached, and to substitute our judgment for that of the findings and conclusions announced. • I think the attack of petitioners is directed, in its last analysis, to the soundness of the conclusions reached, and I fear that we have no power to disturb them upon the showing made. Renewed application to Secretary or court may bring relief if reasonable experience, based upon the conditions imposed by the Secretary’s order, is found to justify it. In this view I concur in the decision to dismiss the bills.