Iowa is the queen among the States of the Union. No other State has so little waste land or is so productive. Her annual output of staple products amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars in value. Her people are intelligent, progressive and just. None are governed more by the precepts of the golden rule, or are more disposed to render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's. She can well be proud of the progress she has made in State control of railroads. Let no backward step be taken.
CHAPTER XII.
THE INTERSTATE COMMERCE ACT.
The Constitution of the United States was adopted nearly fifty years before the locomotive made its appearance. Had the steam railroad been in existence in 1787 and been as important an agency of commerce as it is to-day, there is every reason to believe that the railroad question would have received the special attention of the framers of that instrument. It is a well-known fact that the "new and more perfect government" had its origin in the necessities of commerce, and while the future exigencies of trade were beyond the reach of the most speculative mind, the provisions of the Constitution relating to the subject of interstate commerce were made broad and far-reaching. Section 8 of Article I. of the Constitution provides that "the Congress shall have power ... to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes ... and to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof."
If any doubt ever existed as to the import of the phrase "to regulate commerce," it has been entirely removed by the decisions of the Supreme Court. In the Passenger cases, 7 Howard, 416, the court said:
"Commerce consists in selling the superfluity; in purchasing articles of necessity, as well productions as manufactures; in buying from one nation and selling to another, or in transporting the merchandise from the seller to the buyer to gain the freight."
And again, in the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad vs. Pennsylvania, the Supreme Court said:
"Beyond all question the transportation of freights or of the subjects of commerce for the purpose of exchange or sale is a constituent of commerce itself. This has never been doubted, and probably the transportation of articles of trade from one State to another was the prominent idea in the minds of the framers of the Constitution when to Congress was committed the power to regulate commerce among the several States.... It would be absurd to suppose that the transmission of the subjects of trade from the seller to the buyer, or from the place of production to market, was not contemplated, for without that there could be no consummated trade with foreign nations or among the States."