Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 19.pdf/642

 THE NATION AND THE CONSTITUTION consent." But the power of the federal gov ernment to create the bank and to exempt it from all local authority as to its entire business was vindicated in the fullest measure. Under the national bank act this authority has been carried much further. Usury and its consequences have been defined and all state criminal statutes affecting the transactions of these banks, or their agents or officers, have been held null and void. Now apply these well established doctrines to corporations created for the purpose of carrying on that branch of interstate commerce which consists of traffic and exchange. Would they not fully sustain the authority of Congress to confer upon such corporations manufacturing as well as commercial powers? Would not the commercial activities of such a corporation, which confessedly fall within the scope of the commerce, clause of the Constitution, greatly surpass in importance the functions of the United States Bank which consisted in collecting and disbursing the public revenue? And if a bank created for that subordinate federal function might be given the power of carrying on a general banking business, why could not a corporation created for the pur pose of carrying on interstate commerce, which would be a capital feature of its business, be at the same tune authorized to produce either in whole or in part the articles which it applied to that commerce? It is said that carrying on interstate commerce is not the exercise of a federal power, as was the collection and disbursement of the public revenue, and that is conceded; but regulating interstate commerce is a federal power, and a corporation created as a means of such regulation may be freed from all state action that will interfere with the purpose of its creation. Surely if Congress as a means of regulatng interstate commerce may create corporations to carry it on, it may endow them with all such powers as are fairly con ducive to their success as business concerns, judged by the usual activities of corporations engaged in such commerce.

Our great corporations are now national in their character, and national and inter national in the scope of their operations. To regulate their formation is one of the most direct and efficient means of regulating their activities. For forty-five states to create corporations and the national gov ernment to regulate their most important business cannot fail to result in inefficiency and conflict. Hitherto interests to be regu lated have found advantage in the dual form of authority. It has enabled them to assert whenever either authority attempted their regulation that the power properly belonged to the other authority. We have now arrived at a state of knowledge and publicity which makes this kind of shuffling impossible. The nature of the subject to be regulated and not the shifting desires of the interests concerned must determine the place of authority. Our first great conflict between the states and the nation was waged over the subject of banking and finance. No sooner were we started under the Constitution than the need of a national agency in that field was discovered. But the local jealousy of the states prevented its establishment for more than seventy-five years. During that period we were subject to all the injury and confusion of wild cat banking under state authority. Banking and finance, however, were not more national at that time than commerce and industry have now become, and the same conflict is again presented in this new field. We can get along with divided authority to-day on these subjects just as we got along with state bank notes. This nation can stand almost anything. But it is the duty of government in the exer cise of its power to create conditions which are not simply tolerable, but those which are most conductive to the general welfare. A uniform authority in the field of inter state commerce and industry will be found as beneficent to-day as it was discovered to be in the field of finance and banking as the result of our first economic conflict.