turn. For example, the grant of power to lay taxes was utilized to
destroy an extensive industry obnoxious to the dairy interests--the
manufacture of oleomargarine artificially colored to look like
butter.[1] Also to invade the police power of the States in respect of
the regulation of the sale and use of narcotic drugs.[2] Also to check
speculation and extortion in the sale of theatre tickets![3] The power
to borrow money and create fiscal agencies was utilized to facilitate
the making of loans upon farm security at low rates of interest through
the incorporation of Federal land banks or Joint Stock land banks.[4]

[Footnote 1: _McCray v. United States_, 195 U.S., 27.]

[Footnote 2: Narcotic Drug Act. Held constitutional in _United States v.
Doremus_, 249 U.S., 86; _Webb v. United States_, 249 U.S., 96.]

[Footnote 3: Revenue Act of 1921, Title VIII, subdivisions 2 and 3.]

[Footnote 4: _Smith v. Kansas City Title Co._, 255 U.S., 180.]

It would be an insult to intelligence to claim that legislation such as
this, wearing the form of revenue measure or regulation of commerce but
in reality enacted with a different motive, does not involve an enormous
extension of the national power beyond what the makers of the
Constitution supposed they were conferring or intended to confer. What,
then, of the declaration by the Supreme Court with which we began, that
"to determine the extent of the grants of power we must place ourselves
in the position of the men who framed and adopted the Constitution, and
inquire what they must have understood to be the meaning and scope of
these grants." The answer must be that the Court itself has not always
adhered strictly to this test. The Court has taken the position that