A series of cases have been decided by the Supreme Court with reference to the validity of state laws seeking to control the manner of running and operating trains. When the provisions of these laws have been found reasonably necessary for the protection and convenience of the people, and not discriminative against interstate trains, they have been upheld in their application to such interstate trains. Thus state laws have been sustained which have forbidden the running of freight trains on Sunday;63 forbidding heating cars by stoves ;64 requiring trains to stop at county seats;65 and other populous centers;66 requiring locomotive engineers to be examined and licensed by the state authorities;67 requiring such engineers to be examined from time to time with respect to their ability to distinguish colors ;68 requiring telegraph companies to receive dispatches and to transmit and deliver them with due diligence, as applied to messages from outside the State;69 requiring railway companies to fix their rates annually for the transportation of passengers and freight, and also requiring them to post a printed copy of such rates at all their stations ;70 forbidding the consolidation of parallel or competing lines of railway;71 regulating the heating of passenger cars, and directing guards and guard .posts to be placed on railroad bridges and trestles and the approaches thereto;72 providing that no contract shall exempt any railroad corporation from the liability of a com-mon carrier or a carrier of passengers, which would have existed if no contract had been made;73 and declaring that when a common carrier accepts for transportation anything directed to a point of destination beyond the terminus of his own line or route, he shall be deemed thereby to assume an obligation for its safe carriage to such point of destination, unless, at the time of such acceptance, such carrier be released or exempted from such liability by contract in writing signed by the owner or his agent74 In none of these cases was it thought that the regulations were unreasonable, or operated in any just sense as a restriction upon interstate commerce.75

62 20l U. S. 321 ; 26 Sup. Ct. Rep. 491; 50 L. ed. 772.

63 Hennington v. Georgia, 163 U. S. 299; 16 Sup. Ct. Rep. 1086; 41 L. ed. 166.

64 N. Y., etc., Ry. v. N. Y., 165 U. S. 628; 17 Sup. Ct. Rep. 418; 41 L. ed. 853.

65 Gladsen v. Minnesota, 166 U. S. 427; 17 Sup. Ct. Rep. 627; 41 L ed. 1064.

66 Lake Shore, etc., Ry. v. Ohio, 173 U. S. 285; 19 Sup. Ct. Rep. 465; 43 L. ed. 702; Wisconsin M. & P. Ry. Co. v. Jacobson, 179 U. S. 287; 21 Sup. Ct. Rep. 115; 45 L. ed. 194.

67 Smith v. Alabama, 124 U. S. 465; 8 Sup. Ct. Rep. 564; 31 L. ed. 508.

68 Nashville, C. & St. L. R. Co. v. Alabama, 128 U. S. 96; 9 Sup. Ct. Rep. 28; 32 L. ed. 352.

69 Western Union Telegraph Co. v. James, 162 U. S. 650; 16 Sup. Ct. Rep. 934; 40 L. ed. 1105.

70 Chicago & N. W. R Co. v. Puller, 17 Wall. 560; 21 L. ed. 710.

71 Louisville & N. R. Co. v. Kentucky, 161 U. S. 677; 16 Sup. Ct. Rep. 714; . 40 L. ed. 849.

72 New York, N. H. & H. R. Co. v. New York, 165 U. S. 628; 17 Sup. Ct. Rep. 418; 41 L. ed. 483.

73 Chicago, M. & St. P. R. Co. v. Solan, 169 U. S. 133; 18 Sup. Ct. Rep. 289; 42 L. ed. 688.

From the foregoing it will appear that some of the state police regulations which have been sustained in their application to interstate traffic have had for their aim not the health, morals, and safety of the people of the States enacting them, but simply public convenience. In Lake Shore, etc., Ry. Co. v. Ohio,76 in which prior decisions upon this point are carefully considered, the court say: "The power of the State, by appropriate legislation, to provide for the public convenience, stands upon the same ground precisely as its power by appropriate legislation to protect the public health, the public morals, or the public safety. Whether legislation of either kind is inconsistent with any power granted to the General Government is to be determined by the same rules."

But in Illinois Central Ry. Co. v. Illinois77 a state law was held void as unnecessarily restraining interstate commerce which required trains to run out of their regular routes in order to make certain specified stops. So also in Mississippi Railroad Com. v. Illinois Central Ry. Co.78 was held void an order of a state railroad commission requiring a railway company to stop its interstate trains at a specified county seat, where proper and adequate passenger facilities were already otherwise provided. In this case the fact that the interstate trains were carrying the mails is given as one of the reasons why they should not be delayed except for substantial reasons. The court say: "The fact that the company has contracts to transport the mails of the United States within a time which requires great speed for the trains carrying them, while not conclusive, may still be considered upon the general question of the propriety of stopping such trains at certain stations within the boundaries of a State."Also the impairment of the ability of the road in question to compete with its rivals was considered. "A wholly unnecessary, even though a small obstacle," the court say, " ought not, in fairness, to be placed in the way of an interstate road, which may thus be unable to meet the competition of its rivals." Finally, summarizing its position, the court declare: "We by no means intend to impair the strength of the previous decisions of this court on the subject, nor to assume that the interstate transportation, either of passengers ox freight, is to be regarded as overshadowing the rights of the residents of the States through which the railroad passes to adequate railroad facilities. Both claims are to be considered, and, after the wants of the residents within the State or locality through which the road passes have been adequately supplied, regard being had to all the facts bearing upon the subject, they ought not to be permitted to demand more, at the cost of the ability of the road to successfully compete with its rivals in the transportation of interstate passenger and freight." So also in Atlantic Coast Line Ry. Co. v. Wharton79 was held void an order made under state authority as to the stoppage on signal of certain fast mail trains, the argument being that sufficient service was otherwise provided between the points in question.

74 Richmond & A. R. Co. v. R. A. Patterson Tobacco Co., 169 U. S. 311; 18 Sup. Ct. Rep. 335; 42 L. ed. 759.

75 This summary is substantially taken from that given by the court in Missouri Pacific Ry. Ce. v. Larabee Flour Mills Co., 211 U. S. 612; 29 Sup. Ct. Rep. 214; 53 L. ed. 352.

76 173 U. S. 286; 19 Sup. Ct. Rep. 465; 43 L. ed. 702.

77 163 U. S. 142; 16 Sup. Ct. Rep. 1096; 41 L. ed. 107.

78 203 U. S. 335; 27 Sup. Ct. Rep. 90; 51 L. ed. 209.

In Hall v. De Cuir80 the court held void as to interstate carriers a state law which prohibited any discrimination against passengers carried within the States, on account of race or color, the argument being that such a regulation in its operation would necessarily affect not merely the local portion of the interstate traffic, but the entire interstate trip.81

79 207 U. S. 328; 28 Sup. Ct. Rep. 121; 52 L. ed. 230.

80 95 U. S. 485; 24 L. ed. 547.

81 The statute in question, the court say, "does not act upon the business through the local instruments to be employed after coming within the State, but directly upon the business as it comes into the State from without or goes out from within. While it purports to control only the carrier when engaged within the State, it must necessarily influence his conduct to some extent in the management of his business throughout his entire voyage. His disposition of passengers taken up and put down within the State, or taken up within to be carried without, cannot but affect in a greater or less degree those taken up without and brought within, and sometimes those taken up and put down without. A passenger in the cabin set apart for the use of whites without the State must, when the boat comes within, share the accommodations of that cabin with such colored persons as may come on board afterwards, if the law is enforced. It was to meet just such a case that the commercial clause in the Constitution was adopted. The river Mississippi passes through or along the borders of ten different States, and its tributaries reach many more. . . . No carrier of passengers can conduct his business with satisfaction to himself, or comfort to those employing him, if on one side of a state line his passengers, both white and colored, must be permitted to occupy the same cabin, and on the other be kept separate. Uniformity in the regulations by which he is to be governed from one end to the other of Ids route is a necessity in his business; and, to secure it, Congress, which is untrammeled by state lines, has been invested with the exclusive legislative power of determining what such regulations shall be," As to the constitutionality of state laws fixing rates for interstate carriers as to the portion of the traffic within the States. see Section 343.

In McNeill v. Southern Railway Co.82 the Supreme Court held invalid an order of a state authority compelling a railway, engaged in interstate commerce, to deliver cars containing interstate shipments beyond its own right of way to a private siding. This order, it was declared, "manifestly imposed a burden so direct and so onerous as to leave no room for question that it was a regulation of interstate commerce."

However in Missouri Pacific Ry. Co. v. Larabee Flour Hills Co.83 the court upheld an order of a state authority addressed to an interstate carrier to resume the transfer and return of cars between the railway line and the mill of a particular shipper on payment of customary charges. Two dissenting justices held that the case was not to be distinguished from McNeill v. Southern Ry. Co., but the majority held that the. order in question was simply to compel the performance by the carrier of its common-law obligation to treat all shippers alike.

82 202 U. S. 543; 26 Sup. Ct. Rep. 722: 50 L. ed. 1142

83 211 U. S. 612; 29 Sup. Ct. Rep. 214; 53 L. ed. 352.

In Louisville & Nashville Ry. Co. v. Central Stock Yards Co.84 was held void a provision of the Constitution of Kentucky so applied as to compel a railroad company to receive live stock tendered to it outside of the State, to be delivered to a certain point not its own terminus but in physical connection therewith.

State laws regulating the prompt delivery of interstate telegraph messages, have generally been upheld. In Western Union Tel. Co. v. James85 the court say: " The statute in question is of a nature that is in aid of the performance of a duty of the company that would exist in the absence of any such statute, and it is in nowise obstructive of its duty as a telegraph company."