which affect solely the
internal affairs of that State; consequently all powers which are
national in their scope must be found vested in the Congress of the
United States."[41] The petition to intervene was dismissed on the
ground that the authority claimed for the Federal Government was
incompatible with the Tenth Amendment; but this could hardly happen
today.[42] Under its superior power of eminent domain, the United States
may condemn land owned by a State even where the taking will interfere
with the State's own project for water development and conservation.[43]
The rights reserved to the States are not invaded by a statute which
requires a reduction in the amount of a federal grant-in-aid of the
construction of highways upon failure of a State to remove from office a
member of the State Highway Commission found to have violated federal
law by participating in a political campaign.[44]

Federal legislation frequently has been challenged as an
unconstitutional interference with the prerogative of the States to
control the entities they create, but the attack has been successful
only once, in Hopkins Federal Savings and Loan Association _v._
Cleary.[45] There an act of Congress authorizing the conversion of State
building and loan associations without State consent was found to
contravene the Tenth Amendment. Thirty years earlier, in Northern
Securities Co. _v._ United States,[46] a closely divided Court had ruled
that this amendment was no barrier to the application of the Sherman
Antitrust Act to prevent one corporation from restraining commerce by
means of stock ownership in two competing corporations. It announced the
general proposition that: "No State can, by merely creating a
corporation, or in any other mode, project its authority into other
States, and across the continent, so as to prevent Congress from
exerting the power it possesses under the Constitution over interstate
and international commerce, or so as to exempt its corporation engaged
in interstate commerce from obedience to any rule lawfully established
by Congress for such commerce. It cannot be said that any State may give
a corporation, created under its laws, authority to restrain interstate
or international commerce against the will of the nation as lawfully
expressed by Congress. Every corporation created by a State is
necessarily subject to the supreme law of the land."[47] Even a charter
contract between a State and an intrastate railroad,