the State of Indiana, could in no wise render the statute in question invalid as to the duty of the railroad to respect it.

In the case of Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company v. Kentucky,[42] this doctrine was carried to its logical conclusion. The question was whether a proper construction of the separate car law confines its operation to passengers whose journeys commence and end within the boundaries of the State or whether a reasonable interpretation of the act requires Negro passengers to be assigned to separate coaches when traveling from or to points in other States. In other such cases the Supreme Court of the United States had interpreted the local law as applying only to interstate commerce. The language of the first section of the Kentucky statute made it very clear that it applied to all carriers. The first section of the Kentucky law follows:

"Any railroad company or corporation, person or persons, running or otherwise operation of railroad cars or coaches by steam or otherwise, in any railroad line or track within this State, and all railroad companies, person or persons, doing business in this State, whether upon lines or railroads owned in part or whole, or leased by them; and all railroad companies, person or persons, operating railroad lines that may hereafter be built under existing charters, or charters that may hereafter be granted in this State; and all foreign corporations, companies, person or persons, organized under charters granted, or that may be hereafter granted by any other State, who may be now, or may hereafter be engaged in running or operating any of the railroads of this State, whether in part or whole, are hereby required to furnish separate coaches or cars for travel or transportation of the white and colored passengers on their respective lines of railroad."

Any sane man can see that this law undertook to regulate interstate commerce. Justice Brown, however, tried to square the opinion with that of the Kentucky Supreme Court, upholding the law on the grounds that it was constitutional in as much as it applied only to intrastate passenger traffic, although the law plainly applies also to interstate traffic.

Speaking further for the court, Justice Brown said: "Indeed we are by no means satisfied that the Court of Appeals did not give the correct construction to this statute in limiting its operation to domestic commerce. It is scarcely courteous to impute to a legislature the enactment of a law which it knew to be unconstitutional and if it were well settled that a separate coach law was unconstitutional, as applied to interstate commerce, the law applying on its face to all passengers should be limited to such as the legislature were competent to deal with. The Court of Appeals has found such to be the intention of the General Assembly in this case, or at least, that if such were not its intention, the law may be supported as applying alone to domestic commerce. In thus holding the act to be severable it is laying down a principle of construction from which there is no appeal."