700 HARVARD LAW REVIEW interstate trade, rather than to harry and retard it, the Supreme Court would be diligent to find its way clear to uphold it." ^ After examining the bank cases and the Pacific Railroad cases, he says : " We may conclude that the following principles are confirmed or estab- lished by these western railroad cases: first, Congress may charter corporations for certain purposes; second; Congress may create railroad corporations to engage in interstate transportation, i. e. corporations endowed with a public interest, but organized and conducted by private parties strictly for profit; third, it is a sufiicient basis for the exercise of this power that in the judgment of Congress the erection of such corpora- tions will ' tend to facilitate ' interstate commerce. It is not for the courts to decide upon the expediency of employing this means of ' facilitating commerce' — that is left to the discretion of Congress." ^ In these articles the power of Congress to create corporations and the extent of the power conferred has been discussed in con- nection with an examination of the cases on the power of Congress to regulate interstate and foreign commerce; and it is this power which opens up the most important and the most indefinite field for the creation and operation of federal corporations. It is in this direction that the extension of the power of the federal government is compelled by the expansive force of the commercial instinct in a people which realizes that it is, in fact, a nation and is scarcely conscious any longer of the limitations of the state boundaries. It is on the plea of the need to exercise the power to regulate inter- state and foreign commerce that it is proposed that Congress shall erect corporations with power to manufacture goods to be used in trade beyond the borders of a single state, and it is urged that the regulation of commerce may well require the regulation of the incorporated association by which trade is carried on. There is no need to review the arguments in detail. It is enough to collect and quote from these scattered papers while examining the recent decision of the United States Supreme Court on the'extent of the power of corporations created by Congress and considering whether it suggests any change in the attitude of the court upon the subject involved. The reversal of the decision of the court below in the Federal Reserve Board case^^ was based distinctly upon the
- 17 Mich. L. Rev. 259. " Ibid., 77.
" 244 U. 5.416,425 (1917).
