steps to limit his
levies upon them. It is to be hoped that the boycotting and intimidating
methods resorted to will have no more effect upon the people of that
State than they had on the people of Iowa.

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 Caesar
the things that are Caesar'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 s