PITNEY, BRANDEIS, and CLARKE, JJ., dissenting. 249 U.S. special value attributable to their organic relation to the entire system; that fair appraisal, in a case like this, where the cars constitute part of a system operating in many States, is a matter of serious difficulty, but that absolute accuracy usually is impossible and therefore is not required by the Constitution; and it seems to be intimated that a valuation based upon the aggregate car mileage within the State during the taxable year would be permissible. But, even assuming that such a basis could be adopted without in effect regulating interstate commerce by varying the burden of taxation in direct proportion to the volume of such commerce, it still is obvious that a valuation according to aggregate car mileage would virtually ignore the particular value due to the relation of the cars to the rail system, would in effect be equivalent to a valuation according to average use, and would be open to the same objection, viz., that its ascertainment would lie wholly within the breast of the taxpayer. For, if the state authorities were required to keep a check either upon the average use or the aggregate mileage covered by the movements of rolling stock within the State, and to supplement this with observations in other States in order to arrive at the due proportion, the cost of administration easily might consume the tax. It is because of difficulties such as these that so many of the States have resorted to track mileage readily ascertained and little subject to change as an equitable method of ascertaining the proportionate value taxable by a single State, out of the aggregate value of the movables of an equipment company that does business in several States. This method was very clearly sustained by this court in Pullman's Palace Car Co. v. Pennsylvania, 141 U. S. 18, 26, a case decided in the year 1891, followed repeatedly, and never questioned in the least until now. The tax laws of the State of Georgia, and doubtless of many other 275. PITNEY, BRANDEIS, and CLARKE, JJ., dissenting. States, have been based upon that decision, and I regard it as most unfortunate that at this late date its authority should be overthrown. The Pullman Company was a corporation of the State of Illinois, having its principal office in Chicago, and its business was to furnish sleeping coaches and parlor and dining cars to various railroad companies for use as a part of the equipment of passenger trains running in interstate commerce; the railroad companies collecting the usual passenger fares and the Pullman Company separate charges for seats and berths. The company was subjected by the State of Pennsylvania to a tax upon a part of its capital stock bearing the same proportion to the whole as the number of miles of railroad over which its cars were run in Pennsylvania bore to the whole number of miles in that and other States over which they were run. The Pullman Company objected to the taxation of any part of its capital stock by the State of Pennsylvania by reason of its running its cars through that State in the course of their employment in interstate transportation of passengers; and it is obvious that unless the tax was sustainable as being in substance and effect a tax upon property of the company no greater than that which the State had a right to impose it was invalid because amounting in its effect to a burden upon interstate commerce. It was from this point of view that the court tested and sustained the tax, as the following excerpts from the opinion will show. After declaring that the legislative power of every State extends to all property within its borders; that for purposes of taxation personal property may be separated from its owner and the owner taxed on account of it at the place where it is located, although he is not a citizen or resident of the State which imposes it; and that there is nothing in the Constitution or laws of the United States to prevent a State from taxing personal property employed in interstate or foreign commerce PITNEY, BRANDEIS, and CLARKE, JJ., dissenting. 249 U. S. like other personal property within its jurisdiction; the court, speaking by Mr. Justice Gray, proceeded to say (p. 25): "Much reliance is also placed by the plaintiff in error upon the cases in which this court has decided that citizens or corporations of one State cannot be taxed by another State for a license or privilege to carry on interstate or foreign commerce within its limits. But in each of those cases the tax was not upon the property employed in the business, but upon the right to carry on the business at all, and was therefore held to impose a direct burden upon the commerce itself. The tax now in question is not a license tax or a privilege tax; it is not a tax on business or occupation; it is not a tax on, or because of, the transportation, or the right of transit, of persons or property through the State to other States or countries. The tax on the capital of the corporation, on account of its property within the State, is, in substance and effect, a tax on that property. The cars of this company within the State of Pennsylvania are employed in interstate commerce; but their being so employed does not exempt them from taxation by the State; and the State has not taxed them because of their being so employed, but because of their being within its territory and jurisdiction. The cars were continuously and permanently employed in going to and fro upon certain routes of travel. [p. 26] The fact that, instead of stopping at the state boundary, they cross that boundary in going out and coming back, cannot affect the power of the State to levy a tax upon them. The route over which the cars travel extending beyond the limits of the State, particular cars may not remain within the State; but the company has at all times substantially the same number of cars within the State, and continuously and constantly uses there a portion of its property; and it is distinctly found, as matter of fact, that the company continuously, throughout the periods 275. PITNEY, BRANDEIS, and CLARKE, JJ., dissenting. for which these taxes were levied, carried on business in Pennsylvania, and had about one hundred cars within the State. "The mode which the State of Pennsylvania adopted, to ascertain the proportion of the company's property upon which it should be taxed in that State, was by taking as a basis of assessment such proportion of the capital stock of the company as the number of miles over which it ran cars within the State bore to the whole number of miles, in that and other States, over which its cars were run. This was a just and equitable method of assessment; and, if it were adopted by all the States through which these cars ran, the company would be assessed upon the whole value of its capital stock, and no more. [Italics mine.] The validity of this mode of apportioning such a tax is sustained by several decisions of this court," etc. It was upon this decision, among others, that the Supreme Court of Georgia relied as authority for its judgment. I cannot agree that any part of what I have quoted-least of all the italicized clause which relates to the apportionment of the tax according to track mileage was obiter dictum or unnecessary for the decision. It was necessary certainly so this court deemed it-that the disputed tax be vindicated as a property tax in order to relieve it from the criticism that it was an unwarranted interference with interstate commerce; and it could not be sustained as a property tax unless the method of apportionment was fair and equitable. The authority of the case cannot properly be overthrown by showing, even if it could be shown, that the court might have reached the same result upon some other ground than that which in truth it adopted as the basis of its decision. And it seems to me that a considered judgment of this court upon a constitutional question affecting the taxing powers of the States, long acted upon as a guide to state legislation upon this important and difficult matter, ought not to be PITNEY, BRANDEIS, and CLARKE, JJ., dissenting. 249 U. S. set aside without more cogent reasons than any that are here adduced. Certainly the fact that the established rule of taxation may operate with hardship or even with apparent injustice in a particular case is not sufficient to condemn it. The decision referred to, Pullman's Palace Car Co. v. Pennsylvania, supra, has always been regarded as a leading case, and cited with uniform approval in repeated decisions of this court: not only upon the point that property employed in interstate commerce, and in the ordinary use of it situate sometimes within and sometimes without a State, is subject to state taxation without regard to the place of the owner's domicile; but also and especially in support of the proposition that the mileage basis of apportionment as between the different States may be resorted to in order to determine what tax each State shall lay upon rolling stock used upon interstate railroads, just as it often is resorted to in apportioning the tax upon a railroad as between different taxing districts in the same State. The reasoning of the case upon the point now in controversy has never heretofore been regarded as obiter dictum. On the contrary, it was cited in support of the mileage basis of apportionment for the taxation of a railroad in Pittsburgh, &c. Ry. Co. v. Backus, 154 U. S. 421, 431; and, in Adams Express Co. v. Ohio, 165 U. S. 194, 221, to sustain a mileage apportionment with respect to interstate express companies, notwithstanding the absence of physical unity, s. c., 166 U. S. 185. It was quoted from extensively in American Refrigerator Transit Co. v. Hall, 174 U. S. 70, 75-76, as authority for the apportionment of taxes upon rolling stock according to the track mileage within and without the State; the very part of the opinion now held to be dictum being included in the quotation. See also Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Taggart, 163 U. S. 1, 14, 21; Union Refrigerator Transit Co. v. Lynch, 177 U. S. 149, 152; Union Refrigerator Transit Co. v. Kentucky, |