The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Granger Cases

GRANGER CASES (said by Justice Field during the trial to be the popular term outside for the whole group; but only as being in the farmers' interest, not because the Patrons of Husbandry, or any of its lodges as such, had anything to do with them), six cases decided in the United States Supreme Court, October term, 1876, all bearing on the same point and decided on the same principles. They were Munn v. Illinois; Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad Company v. Iowa; Peik v. Chicago and Northwestern Railroad Company; Chicago, Milwaukee and Saint Paul Railroad Company v. Ackley; Winona and Saint Paul Railroad Company v. Blake; and Stone v. Wisconsin. The first, whose decision ruled the others and was given at much the greatest length, was to test whether the act of the Illinois legislature, 25 April 1871, to regulate public warehouses and the inspection and handling of grain, was constitutional. The case was an extreme one; the act was passed for warehouses only in “cities of over 100,000 people” (Chicago), and was therefore a special discrimination; it laid a host of minute, costly and laborious impositions on warehousemen and elevator owners, and obliged them to publish daily in the newspapers a table of the charges made the previous year, which must not be increased during the current year — therefore, of course, never, as each year was a canon for the next. The court decided that, according to immemorial common law, the government had a right to regulate the use of property for the public good, and to fix maximum charges for public services of those with whom the public has no choice but to deal. Such regulations were never supposed to deprive private owners of their property, but the devotion of property to a use in which the public has an interest subjects it pro tanto to public control. In other words, the public is a partner in public corporations. The forms of law may be changed at the will of the legislative body, so long as they only give new effect to old provisions. And warehouses exclusively within one State may be regulated by State legislation, even though their business involves interstate relations. Justice Field made a powerful dissenting argument, concurred in by Justice Strong, on the ground that the legislature had no right to meddle with private business, and it was simply giving that body the power to confiscate private property, contrary to the Constitution. The railroad cases were all against the power of the States under legislation to enforce maximum transportation rates. The decisions were the same in essence, but the court declined to pronounce that the roads would forfeit their charter if they disobeyed the law, which, nevertheless, was not repugnant to the Constitution. The division of the court was the same; and Justice Field again stated the case for the companies. It was, that the charters of the roads were constitutional, and the right to reasonable compensation was the essential feature of the grant; that what was reasonable was a question for the judges and not the legislature to determine. Such regulation of fares as would take from a company the power to meet its just obligations was illegal, and only the courts could determine the facts; this, therefore, was taking away private property without process of law. Such an interpretation of the limits of legislative power over corporations places them at the mercy of every legislative majority. It makes all business public business, and practically destroys all the guaranties of the Constitution. Consult Hare, ‘American Constitutional Law’ (Boston 1889).