212 THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 



(2) The warehouse business (in Chicago) and the business 

 of operating a railroad are sufficiently of a public nature to be 

 subject to such regulation by the state. 



(3) At least until Congress acts in the premises, a state 

 may regulate interstate commerce so far as its citizens are 

 affected. 



(4) Although a railroad charter is a contract, it does not 

 interfere with the right of a state to regulate charges unless it 

 contains a direct stipulation to that effect, and the charters 

 are subject to reservations contained in the general laws under 

 which they are obtained or in the state constitutions. 1 



(5) The courts are not competent to review the question 

 of the reasonableness of charges fixed by the legislature, or 

 in other words the power of the state to regulate rates is subject 

 to no restraint by the courts. 



Of these five propositions, the first, second, and fourth have 

 been reaffirmed in many later cases, have been consistently 

 followed by the state courts, and can be considered as perma- 

 nently established. The third and fifth, on the other hand, have 

 been completely reversed by later decisions of the United States 

 Supreme Court. 



It was not until eleven years after the decision of the Granger 

 cases that Congress finally enacted a law to regulate interstate 

 commerce. During most of this period the courts and the 

 legislatures, as a rule, acted upon the assumption that it was 

 within the province of a state to regulate inter- as well as intra- 

 state commerce in so far as its citizens were affected thereby. 

 Indeed it seems to have been believed by some that the whole 

 field of railroad regulation might be covered by state action 

 and that there would be no need of federal regulation. In 1886, 

 however, the case of the Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway 



1 The question as to whether a legislature could grant a valid charter containing 

 a contract which would restrain future legislatures from regulating charges, and 

 thus in effect limit the police power of the state, was not involved in any of these 

 cases but the implication from the opinion in Peik v. Chicago and Northwestern 

 Railway Company would seem to be that it could. See, however, Edsall, " The 

 Granger Cases and the Police Power," in American Bar Association, Reports, x. 

 301-316. 



