The position of railway corporations, if possible, was more anomalous still. Their interstate business was subject to the regulations of Congress and their intra-state business to the control of the state legislatures. Although there existed, in theory, a dividing line between these two classes of business, there were always arising concrete cases where it was difficult to say on which side of the line they would fall in the opinion of the Supreme Court. States were constantly being enjoined on the application of the railways for their "interference with interstate commerce"; and when far-reaching legislation was proposed in Congress, the cry went up that the rights of states were being trampled upon. If X shipped a carload of goods to Y within the borders of his state, he paid one rate; if he shipped it to Z, two miles farther on in another state, he paid a different rate, perhaps less than in the first instance. In a number of states companies owning parallel lines might consolidate; in others, consolidation was forbidden. According to a report of the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1902, the states were equally divided on this proposition as to the consolidation of competing lines. According to the same report, if a railway company was guilty of unjust discrimination in one state, it paid a fine of $50, and in other states it was mulcted to the tune of $25,000. At the same time, whoever obstructed a railway track in Mississippi was liable to three months in jail; for the same offense in New York he might get three years; if, perchance, after serving three years and three months in these two commonwealths, he tried the experiment again in Wyoming, he might in the mercy of the court be sentenced to death. A further element of confusion was added by the intervention of the Federal judiciary in declaring state laws invalid, not merely when they conflicted clearly with the execution of Federal law, but on constitutional grounds which meant, for practical purposes, whenever the said laws were not in harmony with the ideas of public policy entertained by the courts at the time. The Federal judiciary in regard to state legislation relative to corporations was, therefore, a destructive, not a constructive, body. To use the language of the street, state legislation was simply "shot to pieces" by judicial decisions. That which was chaotic, disjointed, and founded upon no uniformity of purpose or policy to begin with was riddled and torn by a body which had no power for positive action.