In a strong decision rendered February 19, 1906, the Supreme Court upheld the contention of the Government, declaring that a carrier cannot deal in the goods it carries in such a way as to evade the provisions of the Interstate Commerce Act, and therefore a railway cannot buy and sell and underbid other owners of similar goods who are dependent on the railroad for the transportation of their goods to market. “The existence of such a power would enable a carrier, if it chose to do so, to select the favored persons from whom he would buy and the favored persons to whom he would sell, thus giving such persons an advantage over every other, and leading to a monopolization in the hands of such persons of all the products as to which the carrier chose to deal.... Because no express prohibition against a carrier who engages in interstate commerce becoming a dealer in commodities moving in such commerce is found in the act, it does not follow that the provisions which are expressed in that act should not be applied and be given their lawful effect.” The Court quotes an English case, Attorney General v. The Great Northern Railway, in which the Vice-Chancellor decided on common-law principles that a railway could not deal in coal because such dealing was incompatible with its duties as a public carrier and calculated to inflict injury on the public. The decision is important, and the railways, it is said, have already begun to part company with their coal mines. But it must not be expected that the evil at the bottom of this case can be so easily eradicated. It will be a simple matter to put the coal mines in the hands of special companies controlled by the same men who control the railways, and the coal company and the railway can together continue to do precisely what the railway alone has been doing in the double capacity of dealer and carrier. Within a week of its decision sustaining the Commission in the coal-carrying case, the Supreme Court has reversed the Commission and the Circuit Court in the orange routing case. In 1899 all the railways of Southern California fixed a through rate of $1.25 per hundred on oranges from California to the Missouri River and the East, reserving the right to route the freight. The Fruit Growers Association complained of this as depriving shippers of their right to route their shipments and as virtually constituting a pooling agreement or combination in violation of the Interstate Act. The Commission and the Circuit Court sustained this contention, but the U. S. Supreme Court has now (March, 1906) sustained the railroad plea that they have a right to fix through rates on condition of determining the routing themselves. B.—REGULATION OF RATES.