1900 ] HASTINGS——POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. 539 
impartially, provided that addressee lived within a mile of the 
company’s station or in a town or city where such station was situ- 
ated, was held valid as an exercise of the police power, which the 
court declines to define, but describes as 
‘“‘the general power of the state to enact such laws in relation to persons 
and property within its borders as may promote the public health, the 
public morals and the general prosperity and safety of its inhabitants.” 
In * Telegraph vs. Pendleton a law of Indiana, similar in its 
terms, was held to have no validity as to a message sent from In- 
diana to Iowa, Indiana having no authority to prescribe what shall 
be done in another state. In the Georgia case the law is held to 
apply to messages sent from beyond the state, on the ground that it 
does not necessarily affect the action of the company in any other 
state, nor establish any discrimination against non-resident com- 
panies. 
In? Hennington vs. The State of Georgia the question was on a 
statute forbidding the running of freight trains on Sunday. This 
is sustained, although its effect might be to stop trains running 
across the state from and to other states upon that day. It is pro- 
nounced a police regulation and not one of commerce, though in- 
cidentally affecting that subject, and good ‘at least until Congress 
interferes.’’ 
Chief Justice Fuller and Justice White object that a state can 
make no regulation of commerce, and this act, which suspended it 
for one day out of seven, was certainly a regulation, and no police 
power could authorize an interference with that which the constitu- 
tion made free except as Congress should limit it. Perhaps, feel- 
ing the force of this, the court, in its opinion by Justice Harlan, 
gathered a great array of state decisions as to Sunday laws, and of 
federal cases which uphold state laws affecting commerce, but not 
aimed at it. 
In * Illinois Central Railroad Company vs. Illinois, on the other 
hand, a statute of Illinois which, as construed by the courts of that 
state, required the company to take its through passenger trains 
three miles out of their way to stop in the city of Cairo before 
passing into Kentucky and other states was held to be aimed at 
commerce and void. 
1 102 U.S., 347 (1887). 2 163 U. S., 299 (1896). 
3 [d,, 142 (1896). 
‘WRC, 
