West v. Kansas Natural Gas Co.

Citations

• 221 U.S. 229
• 31 S. Ct. 564
• 55 L. Ed. 716
• 1911 U.S. LEXIS 1730

Syllabus

<p>When a State recognizes an article' to be a subject of interstate commerca.it cannot prohibit that article from being the subject of interstate commerce; and so held that corporations engaged in interstate commerce? cannot be excluded from transporting from a State oil and gas produced therein and actually reduced to possession.</p> <p>Til matters of foreign and interstate commerce there are no state lines; in such commerce instead of the States a new power and a new welfare appears that transcend the power and welfare of any State.</p> <p>Tb.e welfare of the United States is constituted of the welfare of all the States, and that of the States is made greater by mutual division of their resources; this is the purpose and result of the- commerce clause of the Constitution.</p> <p>Natural gas and oil when reduced to possession by the owner of the land are commodities belonging to him subject to his right of sale thereof,- and are subjects of both intrastate and interstate commerce.</p> <p>There is a distinction between the police power of the State to regulate the taking of a natural product,such as natural gas, and prohibiting that product from transportation in interstate commerce. The former is within, and the latter is beyond, the power of the State. Lindsley v. Natural Carbonic Gas Co., 220 U. S. 61, distinguished.</p> <p>A State does not have the same ownership in natural gas and oil after the same have been reduced to possession as it does over the flowing waters of its rivers. Riparian owners have no title to the water itself as a commodity. Hudson County Water Co. v. McCarter, 209 U. S. 349, distinguished.</p> <p>The right to engage in interstate commerce is not the gift of a State; nor can a State regulate or restrain such commerce, or exclude from its limits a corporation engaged therein.</p> <p>Inaction by Congress in regard to a subject of interstate commerce is a declaration of freedom from state interference.</p> <p>Where a State grants the use of it