hief Justice Marshall
answered as follows: "The subject to be regulated is commerce; * * * The
counsel for the appellee would limit it to traffic, to buying and
selling, or the interchange of commodities, and do not admit that it
comprehends navigation. This would restrict a general term, applicable
to many objects, to one of its significations. Commerce, undoubtedly, is
traffic, but it is something more--it is intercourse."[308] The term,
therefore, included navigation--a conclusion which Marshall supported by
appeal to general understanding, to the prohibition in article I, Sec. 9,
against any preference being given "'* * * by any regulation of commerce
or revenue, to the ports of one State over those of another,'" and to
the admitted and demonstrated power of Congress to impose
embargoes.[309]

"COMMERCE" TODAY

Later in his opinion Marshall qualified the word "intercourse" with the
word "commercial."[310] Today "commerce" in the sense of the
Constitution, and hence "interstate commerce" when it is carried on
across State lines, covers every species of movement of persons and
things, whether for profit or not;[311] every species of communication,
every species of transmission of intelligence, whether for commercial
purposes or otherwise;[312] every species of commercial negotiation
which, as shown "by the established course of the business," will
involve sooner or later an act of transportation of persons or things,
or the flow of services or power across State lines.[313]

From time to time the Court has said that certain things were not
interstate commerce, such as mining or manufacturing undertaken "with
the intent" that the product shall be transported to other States;[314]
insurance transactions when carried on across State lines;[315]
exhibitions of baseball between professional teams which travel from
State to State;[316] the making of contracts for the insertion of
advertisements in periodicals in another State;[317] contracts for
personal services to be rendered in another State.[318] Recent decisions
either overturn or cast doubt on most if not all of these holdings. By
one of these the gathering of news by a press association and its
transmission to client newspapers is termed interstate commerce.[319] By
another the activities of a Group Health Association which serves only
its own members are held to be "trade" within the protection of the
Sherman Act and hence capable, if extended, of becoming inte