1900.] HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. 503 
its right to tax the company, though not its right to abolish it, 
and the doctrine of Stone vs. Mississippi did not apply. 
In the case of *Wabash, St. L. & P. R. R. Company zs. State of 
Illinois, its old antagonist the commerce clause gained a fall against 
the police power in a matter of serious moment. The attempt ofa 
state to regulate charges for transportation of goods taken beyond 
the state was held unauthorized even as to the distance they were 
carried within the state. This was an important limitation of the 
Granger cases, and one of a long series of recessions from the posi- 
tion taken in them. 
The railroad had taken a carload of merchandise from Peoria to 
New York for 15 cents a hundred pounds. On the same day it took 
from Gillman, Illinois, to New York a carload of similar goods for 
which it charged 25 cents a hundred pounds. The distance from 
Peoria is eighty-six miles farther and the Peoria car went through 
Gillman. An Illinois statute provided that if a railroad, by any di- 
rect charge, rebate, shift or devise, should charge for transporting 
any passenger or freight more than was charged for transporting in 
the same direction any other passenger or equal amount of freight 
of the same class, such charge should be prima facie evidence of 
unjust discrimination, and fixed a penalty not exceeding $5000 
with treble damages to the party injured for such discrimination. 
The railroad company demurred to the constitutionality of the 
law, and the trial court found in its favor. The Supreme Court of the 
state, however, reversed this, and held the law good and not an 
infringement on the power of Congress under the commerce clause. 
Judge Miller, in the opinion of the court reversing this action, says 
that the precise question was not altogether new though not pre- 
viously determined. 
He admits that the language used in the Granger cases bears the 
meaning that states in which traffic originates may regulate rates 
though it goes beyond their borders, and concedes that in those 
cases the question of the effect of the state’s action upon interstate 
commerce was treated as another application of the doctrine as to 
quarantine regulations, bridges over navigable streams, pilotage, 
etc.—that is, the states might act upon it, but not contrary to the 
express will of Congress. 
He says, however, the main question was the right of the states 
EIL18 1, S:5557 (Oct, 1886), 
PROC, AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XXXIX. 163, GG. PRINTED OCT. 25, 1900. 
