Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/708

672 672 HARVARD LAW REVIEW Pullman Co. v. Adams "^ and Allen v. Pullman's Palace Car CoM^ have already been reviewed in the section dealing with taxes on privileges.^^" The judges here appeared to be of the opinion that no tax on the local business could be a burden on the interstate business so long as the company was free to abandon the local business. These two cases were strongly relied on by the dissent in the Western Union case. Mr. Justice Harlan distinguished them on the ground that they involved no device to reach inter- state commerce or property beyond the state in the guise of a tax on local business/^^ thereby implying that such a device would henceforth receive the disapprobation of the court. Two other cases prior to the Western Union case call for con- sideration. Kehrer v. Stewart ^-^ approved of a state statute "which provided that there should be assessed and collected 'upon all agents of packing houses doing business in this State, two hundred dollars in each county where said business is carried on. ' " ^^ The State court had construed the statute to be applicable only to local business. It was conceded that most of the business was interstate in character, though the exact proportion of each was not shown. In Osborne v. Florida,^^^ ninety-five percent of the business was interstate. This fact is referred to by Mr. Justice Brown in the Kehrer case and declared to be immaterial. The attitude of the court on the general question is expressed as follows: "If the amount of the domestic business were purely nominal, as, for instance, if the consignee of a shipment made in Chicago upon an order filled there, refused the goods shipped, and the only way of disposing of them was by sales at Atlanta, this might be held to be strictly incidental to an interstate business, and in reality a part of it, as we held in Crutcher v. Kentticky, 141 U. S. 47; but if the agent carried on a definite, though a minor, part of his business in the State by sales of meat there, he would not escape the payment of, the tax, since the greater or less magnitude of the business cuts no figure in the imposition of the tax. There could be no doubt whatever that, if the agent carried on his interstate and domestic business in two distinct establishments, one would be subject "* 189 U. S. 420, 23 Sup. Ct. Rep. 494 (1903). "' 191 U. S. 171, 24 Sup. Ct. Rep. 39 (1903). "0 31 Harv. L. Rev. 582-83. See also 32 Harv. L. Rev. 405-06. >" 31 Harv. L. Rev. 592-93. "* 197 U. S. 60, 25 Sup. Ct. Rep. 403 (1905). »a Ibid., 61.
 * Note 116, supra.