[Footnote 2: Sustained by the Supreme Court in Missouri v. Holland, 252 U.S., 416.]
But the most far-reaching method by which federal power under the Constitution has been extended has been the adaptation—some will say the perversion—by Congress of old grants of power to new ends. Under the spur of public sentiment Congress has discovered new legislative possibilities in familiar clauses of the Constitution as one discovers new beauties in a familiar landscape. The clause offering the greatest possibilities has been the so-called Commerce Clause, which grants to Congress power "to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states."[1] Under this grant of power Congress has enacted, and the courts have upheld, a great mass of social and economic legislation having to do only remotely with commerce. For example, the Sherman Act and other anti-trust legislation, ostensibly mere regulations of commerce, but actually designed for the control and suppression of trusts and monopolies; the federal Pure Food and Drugs Act, designed to prevent the adulteration or mis-branding of foods and drugs and check the abuses of the patent-medicine industry;[2] the act for the suppression of lotteries, making it a crime against the United States to carry or send lottery tickets or advertisements across state lines;[3] an act to prevent the importation of prize-fight films.[4] These are only a few among many similar statutes which might be mentioned. In all of them the motive is clear. There is no concealment about it. Their primary object is to suppress or regulate the trusts, lotteries, patent-medicine frauds. The regulation of commerce is merely a matter of words and legal form.
[Footnote 1: Art. I, Sec. 8.]
[Footnote 2: Hipolite Egg Company v. United States, 220 U.S., 45.]
[Footnote 3: Champion v. Ames, 188 U.S., 321.]
[Footnote 4: Weber v. Freed, 239 U.S., 325.]
Especially noteworthy is the rapidly expanding body of social legislation—federal Employers' Liability Act, Hours of Service acts, Child Labor Law, White Slave Act and the like, all drawn with an eye to the commerce clause but designed to accomplish objects quite distinct from the regulation of commerce.
As already said, the Commerce Clause has been found most available for purposes of such legislation. Other clauses have, however, served their turn. For example, the grant of power to lay taxes was utilized to destroy an extensive industry obnoxious to the dairy interests—the manufacture of oleomargarine artificially colored to look like butter.[1] Also to invade the police power of the States in respect of the regulation of the sale and use of narcotic drugs.[2] Also to check speculation and extortion in the sale of theatre tickets![3] The power to borrow money and create fiscal agencies was utilized to facilitate the making of loans upon farm security at low rates of interest through the incorporation of Federal land banks or Joint Stock land banks.[4]
[Footnote 1: McCray v. United States, 195 U.S., 27.]
[Footnote 2: Narcotic Drug Act. Held constitutional in United States v.
Doremus, 249 U.S., 86; Webb v. United States, 249 U.S., 96.]