The Conflict of Jurisdiction.

It would be criticism enough to say that the national Board thus stratified its jurisdiction into a rigid and arbitrary policy. A definite yardstick would at least have the value of certainty. The national Board characterized this yardstick as a "self-denying" policy, and it must be admitted that under it the Board refuses to assume jurisdiction in many cases which a court would be justified in saying affected interstate commerce. For instance, under the category of "instrumentalities and channels of interstate commerce," the Board is now entertaining jurisdiction in cases involving taxicabs in local areas, even though this involves a diametrically opposed policy to its action in the past. On the other hand, for 15 years between 1935 and October, 1950, the national Board took jurisdiction in only five taxicab cases. In four of those five, the companies were actually engaged in interstate transportation and in the fifth case, the main business was the operation of buses. Indeed, the national Board itself, in its Seventh Annual Report (1942), at page 67, stated that the test-citing Supreme Court cases which will be considered later-is "whether stoppage of operations by industrial strife would result in substantial interruption to or burden upon interstate or foreign commerce."