86 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



was grossly exaggerated and misrepresented. The rantings of their 

 more extreme spokesmen were cited as proof that they were wholly 

 without any just ground for complaint. Many thought them bent on 

 confiscation. The hard times following the panic of 1873 were laid at 

 the door of the granger legislation. Nevertheless, the main contentions 

 of the farmers were upheld by the Supreme Court. The granger move- 

 ment did much toward changing the railway policy of a nation. 61 

 Professor Eipley well says: 



Great laws are not the figments of men's minds, conjured up in a day. 

 They are a response to the needs of the time. Their true causes are thus im- 

 measurably complex. Nor does a wholesale public demand for legislation arise 

 overnight. From small beginnings the pressure steadily grows, oftentimes for 

 years; until, perhaps through a conjuncture of particularly aggravating events, 

 matters are at last brought suddenly to a head. Yet while this culmination of 

 industrial or social pressure may finally result in legislation under some particu- 

 larly strong political leadership, to assign such personal influences as even the 

 remote cause of legislation, is to belie all the facts and experience of history. No 

 clearer illustration of the close relationship between economic causes and statu- 

 tory results could perhaps be found, than in the field of our federal legislation 

 concerning common carriers. It forms one of the most important chapters in our 

 industrial history.? 



Fair Plat in Other Directions 



I 



The demand for equality of opportunity at the hands of the rail- 

 ways is part of a much larger movement. The widespread protest 

 against the undue exactions of public utility enterprises in various cities, 

 and the creation of commissions for their control is but another phase 

 of the same thing. Likewise, the movement for the control of the large 

 industrial combination is at bottom a demand for fair play. The revolt 

 against the business methods exemplified by the Standard Oil and the 

 American Tobacco Companies made these concerns so notorious that the 

 Supreme Court ordered their dissolution. In the course of these deci- 

 sions, price-cutting limited to a portion of the market or to a single line 

 of goods produced by a trust, trade wars which aim at buying up corn- 

 ea Solus Justus Buck, ' ' The Granger Movement, ' ' Chapters IV., V. and VI. 

 7 "William Z. Ripley, op. tit., pp. 441-442. Hadley's "Railroad Transporta- 

 tion ' ' and Johnson 's ' ' American Railway Transportation ' ' contain good ac- 

 counts of the movement for state and federal control of railways in the United 

 States. These two works also contain accounts of the relations of the state to the 

 railways in the principal countries of Europe. Ripley 's ' ' Railroads : Rates and 

 Regulation" gives a sympathetic and detailed account of the movement for the 

 control of railway rates by the federal government, but treats only incidentally 

 of the activities of the several states. "Railway Problems," by the same au- 

 thor, contains an excellent selection of reprints. Merritt 's ' ' Federal Regulation 

 of Railway Rates" contains a digest of the more important eases that have been 

 decided by the Inter-state Commerce Commission. 



