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Show -3k- From this analysis issues the legal answer. The regional characteris- tic of electric power, as a social and engineering fact, must find a counter- part in the effort of law to deal with it. No single State in isolation can wholly deal with the problem. The facts equally exclude the capacity of the Federal government to cover the field. Coordinated regulation among groups of States, in harmony with the Federal administration over develop- ments on navigable streams and in the public domain, must be-the objective. Regional solutions in such new and complicated demands upon law must neces- sarily "be empiric and cautious in their unfolding. The exact form of future legal devices will have to be modified from time to time and from region to region, adapted to varying conditions and, it is to be hoped, built on a growing body of experience. The vehicle for this process of legal adjust- ment is at hand in .the fruitful possibilities inherent in the Compact Clause \of the Constitution. It is this solution which Governor Pinchot is press- ing upon, his own and neighboring States.123 Only most painstaking study by lawyers saturated with the practical problems, in collaboration with engi- neers and social economists, can bring the proposal to fruition. But at the very threshold the central idea encounters opposition drawn from doctrines of constitutional law. In the scope of the Commerce Clause lie fatal ob- structlons, it is urged, to cooperation among the States, through compact, in the regulation of interstate movement of power. These constitutional objections must be faced. VI. Specifically, may a regional group of States especially affected by a project for electric power development enter into an agreement, with the consent of Congress, for the effective utilization of such energy generated in one State and transmitted for distribution to neighboring States? All aspects of this problem, as we have seen, are not included within the con- ception of interstate commerce. But to the extent that the process of electrification crosses State lines we are in a field open to Federal regu- lation. If it chooses, Congress may act and preempt State control.1(^ Bv®b without Federal action, no State may discriminate against*125 or obstruct,!^ the transactions in interstate commerce. Between these limits - what Con- gress ma.y do and the States obviously may not do - lies, the field in which 125GovernorTs Message, Report of Giant Power Survey Board, supra note 96, at p. vi. Governors Smith of New York and Silzer of New Jersey have embodied the same suggestion in their special messages to their State Leg- islatures. See New York Times, Mar. 28, 1925* and message of Governor Silzer of March 11, 1925 to the New Jersey Legislature, 12Usee e. g. New York Central R.. R. Co. v. Winfield (1917) 2l}h U. S. litf, 37 Sup. Ct. 5i|6; Lemke v. Farmers* Grain Co. (1922) 258 U. S. 50, U2 Sup* Ct. ?)))|. 125See e. g. Kelt on v. Missouri (1875) 91 U* S. 275? Cook v. Pennsyl- vania (L878) 97 U. S. 566; Robbins v. Shelby County Taxing District (1887) 120 U. s* 2j89» 7 Sup. Ct. 592. 126see e. g. Buck v. Kuykendall (1925) k5 Sup, Ct. 321*. |