Page:Department of Public Utilities v. Arkansas Louisiana Gas Co.pdf/15

 It was urged by the gas corporation that its business in Alabama was wholly interstate, and therefore a franchise tax levied by the state was a burden on interstate commerce if assessed against the corporation. In denying this contention, the court referred to and reaffirmed East Ohio Gas Co. v. Tax Commission, 283 U.S. 465, 51 S. Ct. 499, 75 L. ed. 1171, and said:

"We observed in that case that 'when the gas passes from the distribution line into the supply mains, it necessarily is relieved of nearly all the pressure put upon it at the stations of the producing companies,' its volume is expanded, and it is divided into the smaller streams that enter the service lines connecting such mains with the pipes on the customer's premises In that case, the Ohio company furnished gas to consumers in municipalities by means of distribution plants and that activity was held to be not interstate commerce, but a business of purely local concern within the jurisdiction of the state. The court quoted with approval the statement in Missouri ex rel. Barrett v. Kansas Nat. Gas Co., 265 U.S. 298, 309, 68 L. ed. 1027, 1030, that 'The business of supplying on demand local consumers is a local business, even though the gas be brought from another state and drawn for distribution directly from interstate mains; and, this is so, whether the local distribution be made by the transporting company or by independent distributing companies. In such case the local interest is paramount, and the interference with interstate commerce, if any, indirect and of miner importance.'

"While the facts of the two cases are not the same, there is a clear analogy. We perceive no essential distinction in law between the establishment of such a local activity to meet the needs of consumers in industrial plants, and the service to consumers in the municipalities, which was found in the East Ohio Gas Co. case, to constitute an intrastate business. As was said in that case: 'The treatment and division of the large corn-pressed volume of gas is like the breaking of an original package, after a shipment in interstate commerce, in