Wabash, St. Louis And Pacific Railway Company v. Illinois

118 U.S. 557 (1886)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

P claimed D to be guilty of an unjust discrimination in its rates or charges of toll and compensation for the transportation of freight. D charged one shipper, for transporting twenty-six thousand pounds of goods and chattels from Peoria, in the State of Illinois, to New York city, the sum of thirty-nine dollars or fifteen cents per hundred pounds, and that on the same day they agreed to carry and transport for another shipper another car-load of goods from Gilman, in the State of Illinois, to said city of New York, for which they charged the sum of sixty-five dollars, being at the rate of twenty-five cents per hundred pounds. The car-load transported for the first shipper was carried eighty-six miles farther in the State of Illinois than the other car-load of the same weight. This freight being of the same class in both instances, and carried over the same road, except as to the difference in the distance, it is obvious that a discrimination against the second shipper was made in the charges against them as compared with those against the first shipper. D was eventually found guilty, and the Supreme Court of Illinois affirmed holding that P may regulate subjects over which Congress has not exercised its power.