Clark’s opinion, widely circulated in newspapers, was called “one of the most
important in the previous hundred years.” Clark ruled that the public nature of
the Southern Power Company, given the power of eminent domain by the state
legislature, “subject[ed] [it] to public control not only in fixing and prescribing its
rates, but . . . in the requirement that it shall furnish its facilities at the same rate
to all receiving them under like conditions.” Clark feared that the power to fix
rates without regulatory control would result in rebates, price fixing, and manipulation—problems
that railroad corporations had faced in the late nineteenth century