General Railway Signal Co. v. Virginia Ex Rel. State Corporation Comm'n

Citations

• 246 U.S. 500
• 38 S. Ct. 360
• 62 L. Ed. 854
• 1918 U.S. LEXIS 1569
• 3 A.F.T.R. (P-H) 2969

Syllabus

<p>A foreign corporation, for lump sums, made and performed contracts to furnish completed automatic railway signal systems in Virginia, in the performance of which the materials, supplies, machinery, devices and equipment were brought from without, but their installation, as structures permanently attached to the soil, required employment of local labor, digging of ditches, construction of concrete foundations, and painting. Held, that local business was involved, separate and distinct from interstate commerce, and subject to the licensing power of the State. Browning v. Waycross, 233 U. S. 16.</p> <p>The Virginia law imposing a fee for the privilege of doing local business of #1,000 on foreign corporations with capital over $1,000,000 and not exceeding $10,000,000 (Acts 1910, c. 53, § 38a), upheld, as not arbitrary or unreasonable under all the circumstances, though the case is on the border line.</p>