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The Green Bag

lation; for anything that in any manner inter feres with the operations of interstate com merce is a regulation and a refusal to permit transportation; and a refusal to permit a sale by the importer in the original package is a regulation by the states. As said by the Supreme Court, 'the power to regulate is the power to prescribe the rules by which com merce is to be governed.' It is the power of regulation which is transferred from Con gress to the states. It does not make any difference whether it is called a delegation of power by Congress to the states to prohibit transportation of interstate commerce or a regulation of interstate commerce by Congress. The effect is the same, for it permits the state to regulate interstate commerce. It is not a question of name, but right and power. The equality and freedom sought by the fathers is seriously interfered with. Commerce is not as free as one would be led to believe after reading this opinion of the Supreme Court; not as free as the Constitution in tended. The citizen has not the right the language of the case implies. Prior to the act of 1890, under the broad principles of the freedom of commerce between the states, the citizen could freely contract to receive and ship his products from state to state, and return with his money. Now he has a re stricted freedom of commerce, he cannot ship the products and return with his money." And that In re Rahrer and the Wilson Act had gone too far and were antago nistic to the logic and reasoning of Leisy v. Hardin and Bowman v. Railway Company, to say nothing of the License Cases, the Supreme Court of the United States seemed for a time itself to have realized. The result was a line of decisions restricting the operation of the Wilson Act. Sweeping though that act was in its terms, the Court held that its provisions only became .operative after there had been an actual or constructive delivery of the liquor to the consignee. It was held that a statute of the state of Iowa was unconstitutional which pro hibited railroad companies from deliver ing or carrying for the purpose of deliv ery liquors to consignees within the state without having first obtained a certifi

cate from the auditor of the county in which said liquors were to be trans ported or consigned for transportation, certifying that the consignee was duly authorized to sell such intoxicating liquors in such county, when applied to liquors shipped from a point in Illinois to a citizen of Iowa at his residence within the last named state, and while in transit from its point of shipment to its delivery to the consignee.* The court also held an act of South Carolina to be unconstitutional in so far as it com pelled a resident of the state who desired to order alcoholic liquors shipped in from another state for his own use to first communicate his purpose to a state chemist.t It in short held that the laws of the state could not operate, even after the passage of the Wilson Act, until the goods had reached their desti nation, which was practically the stomach of the importer, and that though he could be prevented from sell ing or giving away intoxicating liquors, even in the original package, he could not be prevented from importing them for his own personal use or at any rate from receiving them into his pos session. But again the court was in trouble. Individual trade was everywhere en couraged by the liquor men, and the pro hibition states were not merely flooded with liquor advertisements but with liquor drummers who, in order to avoid the local laws, were in the habit of merely taking written offers for the purchase of liquor to be shipped into the states and which did not become contracts until accepted by the foreign houses. To prevent this method of solicitation the state of Iowa imposed a license fee "upon the business of selling or offering for sale intoxicating • Rhodes v. Iowa, 170 U. S. 412. t Vance v. Vanderwok, 170 U. S. 468.