that the state could tax the local gross earnings of interstate commerce. The legislature so believed, and their language not only indicates that belief, but also that they acted upon it, and gave their enactment the wide scope which contemporary opinion justified as constitutional. It was not until the decision of Fargo v. Michigan, 121 U. S. 230, 7 Sup. Ct. Rep. 857, that it was supposed that a tax on interstate gross earnings was unconstitutional. This case was decided in April, 1887. The case of State Tax on Railway Gross Receipts, 15 Wall. 284, certainly appears to sustain such a tax; and the supreme court of Pennsylvania held that that was the doctrine which that case enunciated, in Steamship Co. v. Com., 104 Pa. St. 109; Car Co. v. Com., 107 Pa. St. 148; and Telegraph Co. v. Com., 110 Pa. St. 405, 20 AtL Rep. 720. And in the late case of Canal Co. v. Com., 17 Atl. Rep. 175, the same court overruled these decisions, and distinctly states that they were based on the case in 15 Wall, 284, and that they correctly interpreted the scope and effect of that decision, which, however, had been practically overruled by the Fargo Case and the decision in Steamship Co. v. Pennsylvania, 122 U. 8. 326, 7 Sup. Ct. Rep. 1118.
In Canal Co. v. Com., 17 Atl. Rep. 175, the supreme court adopted as its opinion the opinion of the trial court. Referring to the two later decisions of the federal supreme court, above cited, the trial court said: “If the cases thus referred to, with others therein quoted, and the language quoted, do not completely overthrow the authority of the State Tax on Railway Gross Receipts, we are at a loss to understand their meaning. Believing that they do, we think it our duty to disregard that decision, and to follow the later cases in holding that a statute which attempts to tax the gross receipts of transportation companies derived, in the language of the act before us, from “tolls and transportation, telegraph business, or express,” is not valid, so far as such receipts are derived from commerce between points without the state.” There is no doubt that the supreme court of Pennsylvania always has considered, and still does consider, that the case of State Tax on Railway Gross Receipts, 15 Wall. 284, sustained the constitutionality of a tax on the gross earnings of interstate commerce. The Michigan supreme court
