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THE GREEN BAG

And in his last speech, involving a legal discu'ssion on "The People, the . Rail roads and the National Authority," recently delivered in Michigan, Senator Knox states concisely the sequence of events in the field of interstate commerce and the anti-trust law during and after 1902, and thus gives the legislative programme of 1903, all of which was enacted into law : "The specific recommendations were these : a practical and effective law to punish the persons receiving rebates as well as those paying them; a law to empower the Federal courts to issue injunctions at the suit of the Attorney General of the United States, to prevent rebates; a law making it unlawful to. transport traffic by carriers subject to the act to regulate commerce at any rate less than such carrier's published rate; a law to enable the Government to get at all the facts bearing upon the organization and practices of concerns engaged in interstate and foreign commerce; and a law to secure speedy decisions of cases under the anti trust and interstate commerce laws." The theme of the speech is that only un friendly criticism could portray the results accomplished by the administration as bear ing fruit merely in the disturbance of business, that the steady judicial assertion of exclusive national authority over the interstate traffic of the railroads, and the steady assertion of Congress and the executive that the autho rity shall be used to correct evils arising from lack of regulation have not inflicted injury or given just cause of complaint to legitimate interests; that the railroads them selves are beginning to realize the value and protection to their interests of regulation through the Interstate Commerce Commis sion and, citing an old instance in a law of 1866, which authorized railroads to form con tinuous lines of transportation and freed them from most tyrannical state aggressions, he points out that the railroads, having invoked the Federal power to be freed from onerous state restraints, cannot now justly com

plain if the power which helped them also regulates them in the public interest, that they must take the burden with the benefits, that they sought liberty and must remember that liberty is not license but is a freedom regulated by law. In the present session of Congress Senator Knox is making further contributions to the legislation and the discussions on consti tutional law, and always by matter and in a manner which impress force and clearness upon the subject. Thus his employers' lia bility bill is planted safely within the field of interstate commerce, and avoids the am biguity on that point which destroyed the previous Jaw when it came before the tests of the Supreme Court. And in the current movement for prohibition of the liquor traffic which is so important and widespread and is now before Congress, the point which is absorbing Senator Knox is the doubt whether, although Congress can surrender to the State laws its control of commerce after original packages of liquor have come to rest in a State and the contents are exposed for sale, or even after mere delivery to a consignee within a State, Congress can wholly delegate its power to a State as soon as a State line is reached or when a destina tion within a State is reached but before delivery. The immediate and extreme de mand of the prohibition sentiment, valuable and most salutary as that sentiment is, is substantially that the national Government shall do the work of the State, and that where State laws merely operate upon production and sale (which the legislation of Congress has supported to the utmost), but have not yet prohibited individual con sumption apd use, that vital part of the problem shall be turned over to Congress in effect, although Congress has no power what ever regarding any such peculiarly internal concern of duty of a State. This matter, like the Smoot case, suggests the intellectual honesty and courage of Senator Knox, and it is a leading characteristic of the man that he would much rather fail in attaining