ngress passed July 24, 1866, and other acts incorporated in Title LXV
of the Revised Statutes? Can a State prohibit such a company from doing
such a business within its jurisdiction, unless it will pay a tax and
procure a license for the privilege? If it can, it can exclude such
companies, and prohibit the transaction of such business altogether. We
are not prepared to say that this can be done."[628]

In Crutcher _v._ Kentucky[629] a like result was reached, without
assistance from an act of Congress, with respect to a Kentucky statute
which provided that the agent of an express company not incorporated by
the laws of that State should not carry on business there without first
obtaining a license from the State, and that, preliminary thereto, he
must satisfy the auditor of the State that the company he represented
was possessed of an actual capital of at least $150,000. The act was
held to be a regulation of interstate commerce so far as applied to a
corporation of another State in that business. "To carry on interstate
commerce," said the Court, "is not a franchise or a privilege granted by
the State; it is a right which every citizen of the United States is
entitled to exercise under the Constitution and laws of the United
States; and the accession of mere corporate facilities, as a matter of
convenience in carrying on their business, cannot have the effect of
depriving them of such right, unless Congress should see fit to
interpose some contrary regulation on the subject."[630]

LICENSE TAXES

The demand for what in effect is a license is, of course, capable of
assuming various guises. In Ozark Pipe Line _v._ Monier[631] an annual
franchise tax on foreign corporations equal to one-tenth of one per cent
of the par value of their capital stock and surplus employed in business
in the State was found to be a privilege tax, and hence one which could
not be exacted of a foreign corporation whose business in the taxing
State consisted exclusively of the operation of a pipe line for
transporting petroleum through the State in interstate commerce, and of
activities the sole purpose of which was the furtherance of its
interstate business. Likewise a Massachusetts tax based on "the
corporate surplus" of a foreign corporation having only an office in the
State for the transaction of interstate business was held in Alpha
Portland Cement Co. _v._ Massachusetts to be virtually an attempt to
license interstate commerce.[632] In