Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER, with whom Mr. Justice RUTLEDGE joins, dissenting.
If the Court's opinion has meaning beyond deciding this case in isolation, its effect is to hold that no matter how important to the internal economy of a State may be the prevention of destructive competition, and no matter how unimportant the interstate commerce affected, a State cannot as a means of preventing such competition deny an applicant access to a market within the State if that applicant happens to intend the out-of-state shipment of the product that he buys. I feel constrained to dissent because I cannot agree in treating what is essentially a problem of striking a balance between competing interests as an exercise in absolutes. Nor does it seem to me that such a problem should be disposed of on a record from which we cannot tell what weights to put in which side of the scales.
In the interest of clarity, the controlling facts in this case may thus be fairly summarized.
Hood, the petitioner, is a Massachusetts corporation engaged in supplying the Boston market with fluid milk. In New York State, on the border of Vermont and Massachusetts, it operates two milk-receiving plants to which milk is delivered by local producers and whence it is shipped to Boston without processing. These two plants-at Eagle Bridge and Salem-are quite close together. On January 30, 1946, Hood applied to the Commissioner of Agriculture and Markets of New York for an extension of its New York license to purchase milk which would permit it to operate an additional receiving plant at Greenwich, New York. Greenwich is ten miles from Salem and twelve miles from Eagle Bridge. Hood proposed to divert to the plant at Greenwich milk deliveries of producers living in that vicinity who were then delivering to its more distant plants at Eagle Bridge and Salem and to take on at Greenwich twenty or thirty additional producers then delivering to competing dealers in the vicinity of Greenwich.
The Commissioner of Agriculture and Markets denied Hood's appl cation for extension of its license. In so doing, it rested its decision upon the following 'conclusions':
'If applicant is permitted to equip and operate another milk plant in this territory, and to take on producers now delivering to plants other than those which it operates, it will tend to reduce the volume of milk received at the plants which lose those producers, and will tend to increase the cost of handling milk in those plants.
'If applicant takes producers now delivering milk to local markets such as Troy, it will have a tendency to deprive such markets of a supply needed during the short season. * *
*'The issuance of a license to applicant which would permit it to operate an additional plant, would tend to a destructive competition in a market already adequately served, and would not be in the public interest.'
Hood instituted proceedings in the Supreme Court of New York to review the order which were transferred without hearing to the Appellate Division. The Appellate Division sustained the Commissioner's action in a per curiam opinion, and leave to appeal to the Court of Appeals was granted. That court considered Hood's claim that the order violated the commerce clause and denied it on the ground that 'any interference with the free flow of interstate commerce was incidental only.' 297 N.Y. 209, 215, 78 N.E.2d 476, 478-479.
Some of the principles relevant to decision of this case are settled beyond dispute. One of these is that the prevention of destructive competition is a permissible exercise of the police power. Nebbia v. People of State of New York, 291 U.S. 502, 54 S.Ct. 505, 78 L.Ed. 940, 89 A.L.R. 1469; United States v. Rock Royal Cooperative, 307 U.S. 533, 59 S.Ct. 993, 83 L.Ed. 1446; Sunshine Anthracite Coal Co. v. Adkins, 310 U.S. 381, 395, 60 S.Ct. 907, 913, 84 L.Ed. 1263. Another is that a State is not barred from licensing an activity merely because it is interstate commerce. Even more basic is the principle that as to matters which do not demand that regulation be uniformly present or uniformly absent, see Cooley v. Board of Wardens, 12 How. 299, 13 L.Ed. 996, the State may impose its own requirements 'even though they materially interfere with interstate commerce.' South Carolina State Highway Dept. v. Barnwell Bros., 303 U.S. 177, 188, 625, 58 S.Ct. 510, 515, 82 L.Ed. 734. And only recently, be it noted, this Court has characterized the buying of milk for out-of-state shipment as an 'essentially local' business. Milk Control Board of Pennsylvania v. Eisenberg Farm Products, 306 U.S. 346, 352, 59 S.Ct. 528, 530, 83 L.Ed. 752.