1900.] HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. 50d 
clared that the only way in which a state can act upon interstate 
commerce is in the exercise of its police power. The right to tax 
it in any way was denied, and a statute putting a tax of ten dol- 
lars per week or twenty-five dollars per month upon all ‘‘ drum- 
mers’’ soliciting orders for goods was held void as respecting 
solicitors for persons outside of the state, although the same tax 
was lawfully assessed upon those soliciting for persons within the 
state. 
From this to the doctrine of *Bowman vs. Chicago & North- 
western Railway Company was but a step. This was a suit for ten 
thousand dollars’ damages brought by George and Fred Bowman in 
the United States Circuit Court for the Northern District of Illi- 
nois against the Chicago & Northwestern Railway Company for 
refusing to transport five thousand barrels of beer from Chicago to 
Marshalltown, Iowa. The railroad company answered that it was 
intoxicating liquor, and set up an Iowa statute providing that any 
railroad bringing such liquor into the state for any person without 
a certificate from the auditor of the county where it was to be de- 
livered that such person was licensed to sell it should be fined 
one hundred dollars and costs for each offense, and such offense 
be complete in every Iowa county into or through which the liquor 
should be carried, and that plaintiffs had tendered no such 
certificate. 
Plaintiffs demurred to the answer, the demurrer was overruled 
and the defendants had judgment. To reverse this plaintiffs pro- 
cured a writ of error from the Supreme Court. In an opinion by 
Justice Matthews it reversed the judgment and holds it no defense 
for the railroad company that the consignee had no such certificate 
as the Iowa law required, because the act as regards: such transpor- 
tation is void. The’ Freight Tax cases are cited, to the effect that 
transportation is a part of commerce. 
The forbidding introduction of liquors without license is held 
to be clearly a burden upon that which Congress, by not regulating, 
had provided should be free. It was admitted that the policy of 
the state of Iowa forbidding the sale of alcoholic beverages was 
adopted with a view to preserve the health and morals of its citizens 
from contamination, and is a measure adapted to that end. Nev- 
ertheless, such liquors are ordinary subjects of commerce, and the 
law an invasion of the exclusive domain of Congress. 
1725 U. S., 465 (March, 1888). SMV 222, 
