e commerce.[882]
The transportation of natural gas from sources outside the State to
local consumers in its municipalities ceases to be interstate commerce
at the point where it passes from a pressure producing station into
local distributing stations, and from that point is subject to State
regulation.[883] A State public utilities commission is entitled to
require a natural gas distributing company seeking an increase of rates
to show the fairness and reasonableness of the rate paid by it to the
pipe line company from which it obtains its supplies, both companies
being subsidiaries of a third.[884] A State agency may require a company
which sells natural gas to local consumers and distributing companies,
transporting it in pipe lines from other States, to file contracts,
agreements, etc., for sales and deliveries to the distributing
companies;[885] nor does the fact that a natural gas pipe line from the
place of production to the distributing points in the same State cuts
across a corner of another State render it improper, in determining
maximum rates for gas sold by the owner of the pipe line to distributing
companies, to include the value of the total line in the rate base.[886]
A State may, as a conservation measure, fix the minimum prices at the
wellhead on natural gas produced in the State and sold interstate.[887]

FOREIGN CORPORATIONS

A State may require that a foreign corporation as a condition of its
being admitted to do a local business or to having access to its courts
obtain a license, and in connection therewith furnish information as to
its home State or country, the location of its principal office, the
names of its officers and directors, its authorized capitalization, and
the like, and that it pay a reasonable license fee;[888] nor is a
corporation licensed by the National Government to act as a customs
broker thereby relieved from meeting such conditions.[889] So it was
decided in 1944. The holding does not necessarily disturb one made
thirty years earlier in which the Court ruled that a statute which
closed the courts of the enacting State to any action on any contract in
the State by a foreign corporation unless it had previously appointed a
resident agent to accept process, could not be constitutionally applied
to the right of a foreign corporation to sue on an interstate
transaction.[890] A suit brought in a State court by a foreign
corporation having its principal place of business in the S