482
Opinion of the Court
25 years later. Missouri ex rel. Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. v. Public Serv. Comm'n of Mo., 262 U. S. 276, 292 (1923) (dissenting opinion). The Smyth Court itself had described, without irony, the mind-numbing complexity of the required enquiry into fair value, as the alternative to historical investment:
"[I]n order to ascertain [fair] value, original cost of construction, the amount expended in permanent improvements, the amount and market value of its bonds and stock, the present as compared with the original cost of construction, the probable earning capacity of the property under particular rates prescribed by statute, and the sum required to meet operating expenses, are all matters for consideration, and are to be given such weight as may be just and right in each case. We do not say that there may not be other matters to be regarded in estimating the value of the property." 169 U. S., at 546-547.
To the bewildered, Smyth simply threw up its hands, prescribing no one method for limiting use of these numbers but declaring all such facts to be "relevant." 5 Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., 262 U. S., at 294-298, and n. 6 (Brandeis, J., dissenting). What is more, the customary checks on calculations of value in other circumstances were hard to come by for a utility's property; its costly facilities rarely changed hands and so were seldom tagged with a price a buyer would actually pay and a seller accept, id., at 292; West v. Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co. of Baltimore, 295 U. S. 662, 672 (1935). Neither could reviewing courts resort to a utility's revenue as an index of fair value, since its reve-5 One of the referents of value that did prove possible was current replacement or reproduction cost, a primitive version of the criterion challenged in these cases. See McCardle v. Indianapolis Water Co., 272 U. S. 400, 417 (1926); Goddard, The Problem of Valuation: The Evolution of Cost of Reproduction as the Rate Base, 41 Harv. L. Rev. 564, 570-571 (1928).
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