8i8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



issue, or to say of any fact concerning commerce or transporta- 

 tion that it would necessarily be wholly irrelevant in such a con- 

 troversy. Yet the parties defendant, when such a case is heard 

 before the Interstate Commerce Commission or the courts of the 

 United States, are the carriers between Chicago and New York 

 only. When the interdependence of all rates is thoroughly un- 

 derstood and the extent and importance of this condition fully 

 appreciated, it will be a matter of little surprise that through the 

 absence of sufficiently comprehensive information in particular 

 cases, and through the impracticability of treating the subject of 

 railway rates under the present system in the broad and thorough 

 manner absolutely essential to the correction of the evils now ex- 

 isting, even the clear-headed and able men who have constituted 

 the Interstate Commerce Commission have been led into occa- 

 sional errors which have furnished arguments to those who from 

 self-interest desire a return to the system in vogue when there 

 was no public supervision of interstate commerce by rail. 



The conflict of interest between the several corporate units of 

 the railway system is the primary cause of the evils attendant 

 upon railway transportation as now conducted. This fact being 

 clearly established, it is at once evident that that portion of the 

 Interstate Commerce law which was intended to perpetuate com- 

 petition i. e., the fifth or antipooling section is radically an- 

 tagonistic to any wise and practicable system of railway regula- 

 tion. It is necessary at the outset, as a first step toward a system 

 under which railway rates can be made equal to all, that this re- 

 straint upon the carriers should be removed not in order to save 

 them from the bankruptcy that is almost certain to follow the 

 vicious methods now in vogue ; not for the sake of the thousands 

 whose small savings have been invested in railway securities in 

 the reasonable belief that Congress would not legislate so as to 

 destroy an investment through which private capital is made to 

 perform a public function, but in order to relieve individuals, 

 classes of property, and localities from the unjustly discriminat- 

 ing charges for railway service from which they now suffer. At 

 the same time Congress should give some substantial finality to 

 the findings of the board of railway experts which under the 

 name of the Interstate Commerce Commission it has created to 

 adjudicate between the railways and their patrons, and should 

 strengthen the visitorial functions of that body by granting what- 

 ever amendments to the law are necessary in order to secure the 

 production of all the legal testimony desired and by considerably 

 widening the scope of its statistical investigations. 



But this is only a beginning of progress toward more enlight- 

 ened methods of dealing with this important industry. It has 

 never been found profitable to legislate in restraint of natural 



