250 HARVARD LAW REVIEW same consideration that is bestowed on taxes directly on property, and that the validity or invalidity of any particular tax complained of may be dependent on the role it plays in the entire fiscal system of the state. Ill In all but one of the cases thus far considered, the property which has been regarded as the subject of taxation consisted of railroad, telephone or telegraph lines and their accoutrements. By far the greater part of such property is indissolubly annexed to the business in which it is engaged. This is true even of the rolling stock of a railroad, if we have in mind the railroad business in its entirety. Nevertheless a practical distinction immediately suggests itself between valuing the tangible property of telephone and telegraph companies on the basis of income, and applying the same rule to the cars of the Pullman Company. If the Pullman company sold its business, but retained its cars, the cars would not become value- less. Undoubtedly they would be worth less than their reproduc- tion cost, if we assume that they have no market as ministers to luxury. They would fall in value to the cost of the less gaudy and expensive coaches which carry the multitude. But the right of way and tracks of a railroad, and the equipment of telegraph and telephone companies would suffer far more from being disassociated from the business which they serve. There is a genuine practical difficulty in valuing this species of property divorced from the profitableness of the uses to which it is put — a difl&culty immeas- urably greater than that presented by the carriages of the Pullman company.^ This difference, however, was overlooked by the ^* In Pullman's Palace Car Co. v. Central Transportation Co., 171 U. S. 138, 18 Sup. Ct. Rep. 808 (1898) the Supreme Court had comparatively little difficulty in fixing a rule for the valuation of palace cars which excluded from consideration all elements of value derived from the receipts of the business in which they were used. This case was a suit to recover the value of property delivered under an ultra vires contract. The court was urged to consider the market value of the shares of the transferring corporation in determining the value of the property transferred, but it refused to do so, Mr. Justice Peckham declaring: "The market price of the shares of stock in a manufacturing corporation includes more than the mere value of the property owned by it, and whatever is included^ in that price beyond and outside of the value of its property is a factor which in a case like this cannot be taken into consideration in determining the liability of the cross defendant. . . . The probable prospective capacity for earnings also enters largely into market value, and
