Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/572

536 536 HARVARD LAW REVIEW order that the company may profit somewhat from its efficiency and economy.^ This is a matter of defining cost, or reasonable cost; not of permitting rates to exceed cost. A United States Circuit Court has dehvered a dictum to the effect that the state may not constitutionally reduce rates to the cost of the service when the existing rates are no greater than the service is "worth." ^^ This dictum is perhaps unique. The Supreme Coiu-t case of Cotting v. Kansas City Stock Yards CoP has been thought to hold that rates may not constitutionally be forced down to the point where they yield only a reasonable re- turn to the company, if some higher rate is reasonable to the con- sumer. The case has some appearance of laying down such a rule, chiefly because the only elaborate opinion it contains takes that view. But this opinion, while it reaches the result which the court reached, was concurred in by only a minority. No such view is involved either in the opinion of the majority or in the decision of the court. The Kansas legislature had passed an act which classified as "public stock yards" all yards which handled a certain amount of live stock per day. Various regulations were imposed upon "public stock yards"; among other things, the rates which they might charge were fixed and lowered. The Kansas City Stock Yards Company was the only concern the business of which was large enough to bring it within the act. The Supreme Court enjoined the enforcement of the statute, but not at all on the ground that it would be unconstitutional to limit profits to a reasonable return on the fair value of the property employed. The majority — six judges — rested the unconstitu- tionality of the statute solely on the groimd that it deprived the company of the equal protection of the laws. That is, they de- cided nothing more than that mere volume of business — the basis of classification in the act — was not a reasonable basis of classification; that a company might not legally be selected for subjection to regulation of various sorts, while all others were left unregulated, on the sole ground that its volume of business was large. It was not decided that large profits, as distinguished from a large volume of business, would be an improper basis of " Central of Georgia Railway v. R. R. Commission (Ala.) 161 Fed. 925, 994 (1908). " 183 U. S. 79 (1901).
 * L. R. A. 1915 A, 43, note, and cases cited.