THE DIFFICULTIES OF RAILROAD REGULATION. 7 



Fortunately, no other State had quite so severe an experience as 

 Wisconsin. There were somewhat similar laws in other States, for 

 instance, in Illinois ; but the enforcement of the Illinois law was in- 

 trusted to a commission. The commissioners were not men of expe- 

 rience in these matters, but they had the sense to see that the attempt 

 to reduce rates too sharply would defeat the purposes in view. They 

 therefore used their powers with some discretion ; not attempting to re- 

 duce rates everywhere at once, but simply to correct the worst abuses. 

 They were not altogether successful, but they made no such disastrous 

 failure as occurred in Wisconsin. 



There is an undeniable advantage in entrusting the execution of 

 such a law to the somewhat discretionary power of a commission. A 

 court is not well qualified to enforce a hard and fast law concerning 

 railroad rates. The courts are compelled to rely somewhat blindly 

 upon precedent ; while railroad management is so new a thing that 

 the precedents derived from other lines of business are often mislead- 

 ing. The best proof of the usefulness of railroad commissions is the 

 extent to which they have prevailed. Nearly two thirds of our States 

 have them ; there is scarcely a serious attempt at railroad regulation 

 in the United States except through some such agency. 



But, even in the best hands, the power to fix rates is of somewhat 

 doubtful utility. More effective statutes have been aimed at discrimi- 

 nation itself not to fix the rate, but to limit the chance for arbitrary 

 differences. In one sense it ought hardly to need a statute to do this. 

 Secret rebates and personal discriminations are so clearly against the 

 spirit of the law of common carriers, that to call public attention au- 

 thoritatively to these things is to condemn them. The work of the 

 Hepburn Committee in New York, in 1879, had a value of this kind, 

 quite apart from any positive legislation which it secured. The value 

 of similar work done by certain railroad commissions can hardly be 

 overestimated. 



The worst abuses may be thus checked ; but, as long as competition 

 is at all active, there will be a good deal of local discrimination in favor 

 of competitive points, which the common law is powerless to prevent. 

 Against this system the so-called " short-haul " laws have been aimed. 

 Probably no other point with regard to railroad regulation has been 

 made the subject of so much discussion. 



The short-haul principle provides that a railroad shall not charge 

 a larger gross sum for a part of any route than it does for the whole 

 not more, for instance, from Chicago to Springfield, Massachusetts, 

 than from Chicago to Boston. It is thus intended to prevent the 

 more outrageous forms of local discrimination. There can be no doubt 

 that as a general principle it is correct. But it is not one which it is 

 always possible to enforce by law. If the law can reach all the rival 

 routes, and can be enforced against all of them, it does much good and 

 little or no harm. But, if it reaches one route and not another, it sim- 



