Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/292

256 256 HARVARD LAW REVIEW The major issue in the case was the propriety of the rule of assess- ment prescribed, rather than the correctness of the particular application. The validity of the rule depends upon a judgment as to the rightfulness of ever including earnings from interstate com- merce in assessments for state taxation and upon the subordinate inquiry whether the unit rule is suitable to the property of express companies. The first inquiry had been answered in pripr decisions. The second only was novel, and that was novel in form rather than in substance. Whether the horses and wagons of an express company are in- tegral parts of a larger unit depends upon whether you Hke to think of them that way. Mr. Justice White does not. " What unity can there be," he asks, "between the horses and wagons of an express company in Ohio with those belonging to the same company situ- ated in the State of New York? " ^® To this, the majority reply that there is a unity of use and management. To the writer, the answer seems a bit of deceptive word painting. Mr. Justice White says that it "in reality declares that a mere metaphysical or in- tellectual relation between property situated in one State and property found in another creates as between such property a close relation for the purpose of taxation," ^^ Though he dislikes the application of the unit rule to railroad and telegraph property, he holds that it "is necessarily predicated upon the physical connec- tion of such property," ^^ and insists that it cannot be extended to situations where the unity is not physical. He denies that the cars of the Pullman Company were regarded as items in a unit, and contends that the issue with respect to them was solely whether they had a taxable situs in Pennsylvania, and that the statement that the method of assessment applied to them was "just and equitable" was made "with reference to the facts held to exist in the case before the court." ^^ On those particular facts, he finds that the tax in that case was not excessive. The discussion of "relations," physical and metaphysical, might easily carry us to realms where flight for a lawyer is precarious. A physicist would hardly abandon the search for a continuum as soon as he lost the nexus of iron rails. We are told by many meta- •7 Ibid. 98 Ibid. " Ibid.
 * 165 U. S. 194, 250, 17 Sup. Ct. Rep. 30s (1897).