Dissenting Opinion: White, Field, Harlan, Brown, JJ. was a just and equitable method, such statement was made with reference to the facts held to exist in the case before the court. What were those facts? The taxes demanded covered a period of eleven years, and, excluding interest from the time when payable and the attorney general's commission for collecting, aggregated but $16,321.89. 107 Penn. St. 156, 158. Surely, this court might well say that a rule of taxation which operated to assess on one hundred sleeping cars a tax of less than $1500 per annum was, in the absence of any showing to the contrary, just and equitable to the company. No such showing was made. The objection advanced by counsel to the method of taxation was, not that the results produced were inequitable, but that (theoretically, not practically) the method adopted was improper. Indeed, the facts of that case caused the ruling there made to be but an example of the principle subsequently explicitly announced in Postal Telegraph Company v. Adams, ubi supra. It is, I submit, undeniable that if there be such a unit rule applicable to the continuous lines of telegraph and railroad companies, its existence pushes the power of state taxation, as to these particular kinds of property, at least to the confines of the Constitution, and therefore if under the rule of stare decisis the cases which announce it should be followed, they should not be extended. The mere ownership, however, by an express company of personal property within a State presents no case for the application of a unit rule. What unity can there be between the horses and wagons of an express company in Ohio with those belonging to the same company situated in the State of New York? The conception of the unity of railroad and telegraph lines is necessarily predicated upon the physical connection of such property. To apply a rule based upon this condition to the isolated ownership by an express company of movable property in many States, in reality declares that a mere metaphysical or intellectual relation between property situated in one State and property found in another creates as between such property a close relation for the purpose of taxation. But this theory by an enormous stride at once advances the unit rule beyond every Dissenting Opinion: White, Field, Harlan, Brown, JJ. constitutional barrier, and causes such rule or theory to embrace property between which there is and cannot in the nature of things be any real union or relation whatever. If mere intellectual union between property be thus adopted, as a rule of taxation, then all the restrictions upon the power of a State to tax property arising from the fact that the situs of such property is beyond its jurisdiction, as well as of the restraints arising from the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution, are destroyed. Certainly, the mere fact that the same owner has movable property in one State and movable property in another State, does not from the fact of the one ownership create a link of continuity between the property for the purpose of taxation. The fact that if the movable property situated in one State earns profits, and the movable property in the other likewise so earns, and that these profits go to the common owner, does not create such unity for the purpose of taxation so as to make the property assessable in each State. This court has effectually determined that where a corporation is engaged in interstate business, no one of the States has the power to tax the receipts of such company derived from interstate commerce business, and that the power of the States as to taxation on earnings is limited to those derived from the business done within the State. This line of concluded authority is illustrated and referred to in the recent opinion in Osborne v. Florida, 164 U. S. 650, decided at this term. It is, therefore, manifest that where property owned in common, belonging to the same person and situated in different States, contributes to earnings, and the proceeds of these earnings go into the treasury of the owner, and lie side by side therein, that the fact that there is a common owner, that there is a common business, and that all the results of the business are in immediate contact in the common treasury, gives no power to the State to tax the whole, but only to levy on that which comes from the state business alone. How, I submit, can it now be announced that there is an imaginary unity between personal property widely separated because that property has a common owner, without, at the same time, reversing the settled Dissenting Opinion: White, Field, Harlan, Brown, JJ. adjudications of this court on the subject of the power of a State to tax the earnings from interstate commerce? But a few illustrations will serve at once to make clear what I submit is the impossibility in reason of declaring that as a legal fact or fiction property is unified, when between such property there is no unity or physical relation whatever. Take, for example, the case of Brennan v. Titusville, supra. Of what value is the ruling in that case, that a manufacturer cannot be compelled to pay a license for the doing, through his agent, of the business of interstate commerce by selling his goods in a State into which such agent enters for that purpose, if the mere fact that the agent takes into the State a thousand dollars worth of goods, creates a supposed intellectual union between those goods and the vast stock and capital of the manufacturer located in another State, so as to enable the attribution of an aliquot part of the wealth of the manufacturer to the goods in the custody of the agent for the purpose of taxation? Would it not be as true in such case to say that the capital and wealth of the manufacturer facilitates and increases the capacity of the agent to transact business and adds value to the property the agent has for sale, as to say that the horses and wagons of an express company in New York and its capital there facilitate and aid the agents of such company and add value to the tangible property employed by such agents in transacting business in Ohio? It certainly cannot, I submit, with reason be said that there is not the same unity between the operations of a manufacturer who makes his goods in one State and sells them in another as there is between the operations of an express company. The sale of the manufactured goods is as essentially necessary to the profits of the manufacturer as is the manufacture of the goods themselves. No profit can result from the one without the other, and to attribute a supposed unity to the business of an express company, and to deny such unity to that of a manufacturer, is, as I understand it, to declare that there is a difference when there is no possible difference. If the rule contended for by the State of Ohio be true, why would it not apply to a corporation, partnership or individual Dissenting Opinion: White, Field, Harlan, Brown, JJ. engaged in the dry goods business or any other business having branches in various States? Would it not be as proper to say of such agencies, as it is of the agencies of express companies, that there is an intellectual unity of earnings between the main establishment and all such agencies, and therefore a right to assess goods found in an agency with relation to the capital and wealth of the original house and all the other branches situated in other States? Take the case of a merchant carrying on a general commercial business in one State and having connections of confidence and credit with another merchant of great capital in another State. If this rule be true, can it not also be said that such merchant derives advantages in his business from the sum of the capital in other States which may be availed of to extend his credit and his capacity to do business, and that therefore his tangible property must be valued accordingly? Suppose bankers in Boston, Philadelphia and New York of great wealth, owning stocks and bonds of various kinds, send representatives to New Orleans with a limited sum of money there to commence business. These representatives rent offices and buy office furniture. Is it not absolutely certain that the business of those individuals would be largely out of proportion to the actual capital possessed by them, because of the fact that reflexly and indirectly their business and credit is supported by the home offices? In this situation, the assessor comes for their tax return. He finds noted thereon only a limited sum of money and the value of the office furniture. What is to prevent that official under the rule of supposed metaphysical or intellectual unity between property from saying: "It is true you have but a small tangible capital, and your office furniture is only worth $250, but the value of property is in its use, and as you have various elements of wealth situated in the cities named, I will assess your property because of its use at a million dollars"? Such conduct would be exactly in accord with the power of taxation which it is here claimed the State of Ohio possesses, and which, as I understand it, the court now upholds. To give the illustrations, I submit, is to point to the confusion, injustice and impossibility of such a rule. Dissenting Opinion: White, Field, Harlan, Brown, JJ. Nor, in conclusion, I submit is there any force in the argument advanced at bar that we have entered a new era requiring new and progressive adjudications, and that unless this court admits the power of the State of Ohio to tax to be as claimed, it will enable aggregations of capital to escape just taxation by the several States. This assertion, at best, but suggests that unless constitutional safeguards be overthrown, harm will come and wrong will be done. In its last analysis. the claim is but a protestation that our institutions are a failure, that time has proven that the Constitution should not have been adopted, and that this court should now recognize that fact and shape its adjudications accordingly. The claim is as unsound as the fictitious assertion of expediency by which it is sought to be supported. If it be true that by the present enforcement of the Constitution and laws property will escape taxation, the remedy must come not from violating the Constitution but from upholding it. Within the power lodged in Congress to regulate commerce between the States ample authority exists to enact the necessary legislation to prevent the just relations between the States, and the regulation of such commerce from becoming the pretext for avoiding the proper burdens of either State. or national taxation. As the necessity arises such apt powers will doubtless be brought into operation. The recognition of the right of taxation exerted by the State of Ohio in these cases must, if followed in other States, not only reproduce the illegality and injustice here shown, but greatly increase it, as every new imposition will be a new levy on property already taxed, and result in an additional burden on interstate commerce. If the principles by which such results are brought about be recognized as lawful under the Constitution, not only will Congress be deprived of all power to protect the citizens of the respective States and the States themselves from these conditions, but it will also be rendered impotent to devise under the power to regulate commerce any just and fair regulation to prevent the interstate commerce clause from being made a shield for avoiding taxation and to cause property engaged in such commerce to be subjected to just and |