The Mises Blog talks about the Grangers today.

Well, actually yesterday.

There was definitely a problem, but the politicians shanghaied the revolution. The problem was that the government gave monopolies to the railroads and eminent domained anybody who got in their way. They did the same for Rockefeller's pipelines. That's not mentioned in this article. Nope. It's that awful "unbridled Capitalism".

Munn v. Illinois is the first case that found in favor of the Grangers. I don't see much citing of the Constitution in The Opinion of the Court. Section 9 at least takes a Federalist position, that states are allowed to do many things the Federal Government may not.

JUSTICE STEPHEN FIELD's dissent in Munn v. Illinois

The declaration of the Constitution of 1870, that private buildings used for private purposes shall be deemed public institutions, does not make them so. The receipt and storage of grain in a building erected by private means for that purpose does not constitute the building a public warehouse. There is no magic in the language, though used by a constitutional convention, which can change a private business into a public one, or alter the character of the building in which the business is transacted. A tailor's or a shoemaker's shop would still retain its private character, even though the assembled wisdom of the State should declare, by organic act or legislative ordinance, that such a place was a public workshop, and that the workmen were public tailors or public shoemakers. One might as well attempt to change the nature of colors, by giving them a new designation. The defendants were no more public warehousemen, as justly observed by counsel, than the merchant who sells his merchandise to the public is a public merchant, or the blacksmith who shoes horses for the public is a public blacksmith; and it was a strange notion that by calling them so they would be brought under legislative control.