212 PHILANDER C. KNOX 



the answer to this question should be in the affirmative, a 

 second question follows : How might congress so amend the 

 present law? 



I do not scruple to say that in my judgment the more a 

 thoughtful mind reflects on the first question, the more un- 

 hesitatingly will an affirmative answer be returned. That 

 regulation by congress in this way would indirectly or re- 

 motely affect production would be no bar. The very point 

 of the sugar trust case was that a consolidated scheme of pro- 

 duction might lead to commerce, or might indirectly or re- 

 motely affect commerce, but did not for that reason invoke 

 the federal power over commerce; and the illustration from 

 the converse of the situation is significant on the point just 

 stated. Congress under this power prevents the importation 

 or transportation of articles deemed injurious to the general 

 welfare. Thus the laws subject the movement of explosives 

 to safeguards and burdens, absolutely excludes impure lit- 

 erature and diseased cattle, convicts and contract labor, and 

 scrutinizes and prevents or checks many foreign and inter- 

 state movements, throughout the entire field of international 

 and national intercourse, in the interest of all the people, on 

 grounds of commercial, hygienic, or ethical policy. Who 

 shall set limits now, in advance of a carefully framed and 

 judicially tested law, to the competence of congress to reg- 

 ulate commerce in the way suggested in the exercise of the 

 legislative wisdom and in the wide discretion confided to it? 

 Who shall say that the power of congress does not extend so 

 far? I think it does. I am quite sure no one can now say 

 that it does not. Every constitutional question is an open 

 one until it is authoritatively closed by a decision of the 

 Supreme court. 



And now a word as to what has been undertaken and 

 accomplished under many and peculiar embarrassments in 

 the way of executing existing laws. 



In 1904 it came to the knowledge of the president that 

 great railway systems in the middle west, upon which every sec- 

 tion of the country is dependent for the movement of bread- 

 stuffs, had entered into unlawful agreements to transport the 

 shipments of a few favored grain buyers at rates much below 



