450 HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. |June 19, 
CHAPTER VIII 
THe PoLiceE PowER IN THE FEDERAL SUPREME COURT. 
Notwithstanding the new jurisdiction conferred by the fourteenth 
amendment, the next case in the federal Supreme Court on this 
subject, after the Slaughter-house cases, went back to the old con- 
tention between the police power and the interstate commerce 
clause. This was in * Railroad Company vs. Fuller. A statute of 
the state of Iowa required all railroads operating in that state an- 
nually in the month of September to fix rates of freight and fares 
for passengers and post them up on October 1 in each depot and 
station, and fixed a penalty for charging more than the rates so 
posted. An act of Congress of 1866 made all railroads carrying 
goods or passengers post roads and authorized them to do such 
business and receive pay for it. Fuller having shipped some freight 
from Chicago, Ill., to Marshalltown, Iowa, and being charged, as 
he asserted, a higher rate of freight than that posted, sued to 
recover back the difference. 
The railroad among its defenses claimed that the Iowa statute 
was unconstitutional and an infringement of the exclusive power 
of Congress to regulate commerce between the states. The long 
warfare between the states and the railroads in the federal courts 
thus began, unless the case of the tax on railroad gross receipts, 
decided in 1872, be considered to have commenced it. The 
Supreme Court of the State of Iowa held the statute valid as a 
measure of police and legislation appropriate to the duties of com- 
mon carriers. The railroad company seems to have based its claim 
to exemption from such act upon the fact that Congress had legis- 
lated on the subject as above indicated. Otherwise, they say, the act 
in question would be valid under the rule in the familiar cases of 
2 ex parte McNiel, * Wilson vs. Blackbird Creek Marsh Company, 
and ‘ Gilman vs. City of Philadelphia, and others. 
Judge Swayne for the court held in this case, as in that of the 
117 Wall, 560 (1873). SOUP el 2d 5. 
213 Wall, 236. 43 Wall, 713. 
