ostal routes
within its borders under the authority of the Post Road Act of
1866,[872] nor to exclude altogether a company proposing to take
advantage of the act;[873] but that act does not deprive the State or a
municipality of the right to subject telegraph companies to reasonable
regulations, and an ordinance regulating the erection and use of poles
and wires in the streets does not interfere with the exercise of
authority under that act.[874] The jurisdiction conferred by The
Transportation Act of 1920 upon the Interstate Commerce Commission, and
since transferred to the Federal Communications Commission, over
accounts and depreciation rates of telephone companies does not, in the
absence of exercise by the federal agency of its power, operate to
curtail the analogous State authority;[875] nor is an unconstitutional
burden laid upon interstate commerce by the action of a State agency in
requiring a telephone company to revise its intrastate toll rates so as
to conform to rates charged for comparable distances in interstate
service.[876]

GAS AND ELECTRICITY

The business of piping natural gas from one State to another to local
distributors which sell it locally to consumers is a branch of
interstate commerce which a State may not regulate.[877] Likewise, an
order by a State commission fixing rates on electric current generated
within the States and sold to a distributor in another State, imposes an
unconstitutional burden on interstate commerce, although the regulation
of such rates would necessarily benefit local consumers of electricity
furnished by the same company.[878] In the absence, on the other hand,
of contrary regulation by Congress a State may regulate the sale to
consumers in its cities of natural gas produced in and transmitted from
another State;[879] nor did Congress, by the National Gas Act of 1938,
impose any such contrary regulation.[880] Likewise, a State is left free
by the same act to require a gas company engaged in interstate commerce
to obtain a certificate of convenience before selling directly to
customers in the State.[881] And where a pipe line is used to distribute
both gas that is brought in from without the State and gas that is
produced and used within the State, and the two are commingled, but
their proportionate quantities are known, an order by the State
commission directing the gas company to continue supplying gas from the
line to a certain community does not burden interstat