passing upon the constitutionality of any part of the act, for it would, under that interpretation, have related solely to a tax on local earnings, conceded to be valid by all the cases, and so held in this very decision. That such a ‘tax is valid, see Sands v. Improvement Co., 123 U. 8. 295, 8 Sup. Ct. Rep. 113; State Freight Tax, 15 Wall. 232; Fargo v. State, 121 U. S. 230, 7 Sup. Ct. Rep. 857; Ratterman vy. Telegraph Co., 127 U. S. 411, 8 Sup. Ct. Rep. 1127. Courts are loath to hold any portion of an act unconstitutional, and the supreme court in that case would never have adjudged the unconstitutionality of that part of the statute which referred to interstate earnings could it possibly have held that such earnings were not within the purview of the law. Say the court on this point: ‘It is clear at the outset, and conceded by the attorney general for the appellant, that so much of the act * * * as provides for a tax, or the payment of a percentage in lieu thereof, upon the gross earnings of a railroad company operating in this territory, received for business—the transportation of passengers and property not local, that is, not originating and ending wholly within this territory, but interstate, and therefore coming under the head of interstate commerce—is unconstitutional and void.” The attorney general of the territory also construed the statute to refer to interstate gross earnings. In fact, all the officers of the territory charged with the enforcement of this law have adopted the same interpretation, and that construction was acquiesced in by the plaintiff and all other railroad corporations until the decision in the Fargo Case, when the plaintiff insisted, not that the act did not in terms relate to interstate earnings, but that, in so far as it did embrace such earnings, it was, in the light of the ruling in the Fargo Case, unconstitutional and void. The promptness with which the plaintiff seized upon this ground to resist the payment of the tax on interstate earnings furnished strong evidence that it did not consider that the other ground, now for the first time urged, existed.
A construction placed upon a statute by those intrusted with the enforcement of it is strong evidence of its meaning, especially where, as in this case, that construction has been adopted by parties interested, when the contrary interpretation
