Opinion of the Court. or disadvantage to persons or traffic similarly circumstanced, the act to regulate commerce leaves common carriers, as they were at the common law, free to make special rates looking to the increase of their business, to classify their traffic, to adjust and apportion their rates so as to meet the necessities of commerce and of their own situation and relation to it, and generally to manage their important interests upon the same principles which are regarded as sound and adopted in other trades and pursuits. The carriers are better qualified to adjust such matters than any court or board of public administration, and, within the limitations suggested, it is safe and wise to leave to their traffic managers the adjusting of dissimilar circumstances and conditions to their business." 41 U. S. App. 453. The last sentence in this extract is objected to by the Commission's counsel, as declaring that the determination of the extent to which discrimination is justified by circumstances and conditions should be left to the carriers. If so read, we should not be ready to adopt or approve such a position. But we understand the statement, read in the connection in which it occurs, to mean only that, when once a substantial dissimilarity of circumstances and conditions has been made to appear, the carriers are, from the nature of the question, better fitted to adjust their rates to suit such dissimilarity of circumstances and conditions than courts or commissions; and when we consider the difficulty, the practical impossibility, of a court or a commission taking into view the various and continually changing facts that bear upon the question, and intelligently regulating rates and charges accordingly, the observation objected to is manifestly just. But it does not mean that the action of the carriers, in fixing and adjusting the rates, in such instances, is not subject to revision by the Commission and the courts, when it is charged that such action has resulted in rates unjust or unreasonable, or in unjust discriminations and preferences. And such charges were made in the present case, and were considered, in the first place by the Commission, and afterwards by the Circuit Court and by the Circuit Court of Appeals. Opinion of the Court. The first contention we encounter, upon this branch of the case, is that the Circuit Court had no jurisdiction to review the judgment of the Commission upon this question of fact; that the court is only authorized to inquire whether or not the Commission has misconstrued the statute and thereby exceeded its power; that there is no general jurisdiction to take evidence upon the merits of the original controversy; and, especially, that questions under the third section are questions of fact and not of power, and hence unreviewable. We think this contention is sufficiently answered by simply referring to those portions of the act which provide that, when the court is invoked by the Commission to enforce its lawful orders or requirements, the court shall proceed, as a court of equity, to hear and determine the matter, and in such manner as to do justice in the premises. In the case of Cincinnati, N. O. and Texas Pac. Railway v. Int. Com. Com., 162 U. S. 184, the findings of the Commission were overruled by the Circuit Court, after additional evidence taken in the court, and the decision of the Circuit Court was reviewed in the light of the evidence and reversed by the Circuit Court of Appeals, and this court, in reference to the argument that the Commission had not given due weight to the facts that tended to show that the circumstances and conditions were so dissimilar as to justify the rates charged, held that as the question was one of fact, peculiarly within the province of the Commission, and as its conclusions had been accepted and approved by the Circuit Court of Appeals, and as this court found nothing in the record that made it our duty to draw a different conclusion, the decree of the Circuit Court of Appeals should be affirmed. Such a holding clearly implies that there was power in the courts. below to consider and apply the evidence and in this court to review their decisions. So in the case of Texas & Pacific Railway v. Interstate Com. Com., 162 U. S. 197, the decision of the Circuit Court of Appeals, which affirmed the validity of the order of the Commission, upon the ground that, even if ocean competition should be regarded as creating a dissimilar condition, yet that, Opinion of the Court. in the case under consideration, the disparity in rates was too great to be justified by that condition, was reversed by this court, not because the Circuit Court had no jurisdiction to consider the evidence and thereupon to affirm the validity of the order of the Commission, but because that issue was not actually before the court, and that no testimony had been adduced by either party on such an issue; and it was said that the language of the act authorizing the court to hear and determine the matter as a case of equity, "necessarily implies that the court is not concluded by the findings or conclusions of the Commission.” Accordingly our conclusion is that it was competent, in the present case, for the Circuit Court, in dealing with the issues raised by the petition of the Commission and the answers thereto, and for the Circuit Court of Appeals on the appeal, to determine the case upon a consideration of the allegations of the parties and of the evidence adduced in their support, giving effect, however, to the findings of fact in the report of the Commission as prima facie evidence of the matters therein stated. It has been uniformly held by the several Circuit Courts and the Circuit Courts of Appeal, in such cases, that they are not restricted to the evidence adduced before the Commission, nor to a consideration merely of the power of the Commission to make the particular order under question, but that additional evidence may be put in by either party, and that the duty of the court is to decide, as a court of equity, upon the entire body of evidence. Coming at last to the questions of fact in this case, we encounter a large amount of conflicting evidence. It seems undeniable, as the effect of the evidence on both sides, that an actual dissimilarity of circumstances and conditions exists between the cities concerned, both as respects the volume of their respective trade and the competition, affecting rates, occasioned by rival routes by land and water. Indeed, the Commission itself recognized such a state of facts by making an allowance, in the rates prescribed, for dissimilarity resulting from competition, and it was contended on behalf of the Com Dissenting Opinion: Harlan, J. mission, both in the courts below and in this court, that the competition did not justify the discriminations against Troy to the extent shown, and that the allowance made therefor by the Commission was a due allowance. The issue is thus restricted to the question of the preponderance of the evidence on the respective sides of the controversy. We have read the evidence disclosed by the record, and have endeavored to weigh it with the aid of able and elaborate discussions by the respective counsel. No useful purpose would be served by an attempt to formally state and analyze the evidence, but the result is that we are not convinced that the courts below erred in their estimate of the evidence, and that we perceive no error in the principles of law on which they proceeded in the application of the evidence. The decree of the Circuit Court of Appeals is accordingly Affirmed. MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, dissenting. merce. I dissent from the opinion and judgment in this case. Taken in connection with other decisions defining the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission, the present decision, it seems to me, goes far to make that commission a useless body for all practical purposes, and to defeat many of the important objects designed to be accomplished by the various enactments of Congress relating to interstate comThe Commission was established to protect the public against the improper practices of transportation companies engaged in commerce among the several States. It has been left, it is true, with power to make reports, and to issue protests. But it has been shorn, by judicial interpretation, of authority to do anything of an effective character. It is denied many of the powers which, in my judgment, were intended to be conferred upon it. Besides, the acts of Congress are now so construed as to place communities on the lines of interstate commerce at the mercy of competing railroad companies engaged in such commerce. The judgment in this case, if I do not misapprehend its scope and effect, Syllabus. proceeds upon the ground that railroad companies, when competitors for interstate business at certain points, may, in order to secure traffic for and at those points, establish rates that will enable them to accomplish that result, although such rates may discriminate against intermediate points. Under such an interpretation of the statutes in question, they may well be regarded as recognizing the authority of competing railroad companies engaged in interstate commerce — when their interests will be subserved thereby to build up favored centres of population at the expense of the business of the country at large. I cannot believe that Congress intended any such result, nor do I think that its enactments, properly interpreted, would lead to such a result. -- CHAVES v. UNITED STATES. APPEAL FROM THE COURT OF PRIVATE LAND CLAIMS. No. 4. Argued October 12, 1897. - Decided November 15, 1897. By the Spanish law in force at the time of the alleged grant of 1788, set up in this case, lots and lands were distributed to those who were intending to settle, and it was provided that, "when said settlers shall have lived and labored in said settlements during the space of four years, they are hereby empowered, from the expiration of said term, to sell the same, and freely to dispose of them, at their will, as their own property," but confirmation after the four years had elapsed was required in completion of the legal title; and it was further provided that it should "not be lawful to give or distribute lands in a settlement to such persons as already possess some in another settlement, unless they shall leave their former residence, and remove themselves to the new place to be settled, except where they shall have resided in the first settlement during the four years necessary to entitle them to fee-simple right, or unless they shall relinquish their title to the same for not having fulfilled their obligation." On the facts in this case it is Held, that the granting papers in this record, taken together, do not justify the presumption of settlement and working by the two Garcias on the tract contained in the grant of 1788, for the ten years prior to 1798, or for four years thereof, or any confirmation of the grant thereupon, but that the contrary is to be inferred from the testimony in respect of possession; that Armenta's VOL. CLXVm-12 |