3 02 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



are subject to government control for the enforcement of reasonable 

 rates. Chief -Justice "Waite has decided that a State has the right to 

 regulate any business such as grain-elevating, dedicated to a public 

 use, and this decision is held to apply a fortiori to railroads. All au- 

 thorities agree that each State can, if it chooses, supervise the railroads 

 within its borders in the public interest, and the allowability of Federal 

 control is deduced from that paragraph in the Constitution which says 

 that Congress has power to regulate commerce between the States. 

 Against all this the railroads urge that the essence of property is in 

 control, and that if the Government wishes to manage the lines it 

 should buy them. It is contended that no Government officials can 

 fitly prescribe rules for the regulation of a business so complicated as 

 railroading, and that complaints so far from being abated would in- 

 crease were the blight of political patronage to fall upon the transpor- 

 tation lines of the country. The party who urge the necessity of 

 Government control of railroads among their arguments give promi- 

 nence to the fact that an area of public lands, nine times that of Ohio, 

 has been given to railroads to aid in their construction. In reply, the 

 corporations say that these lands formed part of the business considera- 

 tion on which they began work ; and, furthermore, the value of these 

 lands for the most part has been created solely by the existence of 

 railroad facilities. 



The debate for and against leaving the railroad problem to solve 

 itself has not shown that the people who wish to invoke control by 

 the Federal Government have numbers or influence or very sound ar- 

 guments on their side. To throw the management of between six 

 and seven thousand millions of capital into the hands of political par- 

 tisans, who only represent the people in an indirect way through cum- 

 brous elective machinery, is a proposal which few seriously consider ; 

 but, if the Federal Government can not honestly and safely be called 

 upon to control railroads, the establishment of railroad commissions 

 may render important services to the public. Twenty-six of the States 

 have such commissions, intended to supervise and regulate railroads in 

 the public interest, but the variety in the laws creating them, the lim- 

 its of State jurisdiction in the presence of so many interstate roads, 

 and their general lack of authority, render their efforts but feeble. 

 These commissions depend for success on the degree of good sense 

 which is employed in forming them, in the personal character and 

 ability of their boards, and in the commissioners remaining long enough 

 in office to be able to gain and use experience in their duties. Of the 

 commissions so far established in the Union, that of Massachusetts 

 takes the lead ; its guiding principle is not that of force, so popular in 

 Western railroad legislation, but that of publicity, trusting to the in- 

 fluence of an enlightened public opinion. The Massachusetts Com- 

 mission has authority to obtain and publish in full detail the annual 

 statements of the railroads of the Commonwealth. Their capitals, 



