458 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



iiig load at small stations, fuel, grade, volume of traffic, cost of 

 domestic goods at terminals as against direct importations from 

 convenient ports of entry, rates of exchange, markets, first cost of 

 plant, location and construction of track — and a few thousand 

 other such items (an array which tends to make the practical 

 railroad man's head swim by the very enumeration, but which 

 are of no consequence whatever — are but the crackling of thorns 

 under a pot — to the politician who represents his " district " in the 

 Legislature or in the lobby), went into the consideration of the 

 question of division of tariff receipts before the pool commis- 

 sioner, (We may pause to ask, if reasonable rates were charged 

 the public for transportation by a pooling road, what concern was 

 it of the public's how the rates were divided when received ? If 

 I go into Delmonico's and pay a dollar for my luncheon, and on 

 the way out stop at the cigar-stand and pay a quarter of a dollar 

 for a cigar, what business is it of mine how the two cashiers I 

 have paid equate the two payments — whether they turn them in 

 as cash or merchandise, or itemized, or as items, or as receipts ?) 

 The public were not interested in the book-keeping methods of 

 our railway companies. They were, however, very deeply inter- 

 ested in the cheapening of railway tariffs ; and when, on the abo- 

 lition of the pool, rate wars began again and tariffs advanced 

 until — up to the first day of July the people had paid about $C0,- 

 000,000 to the companies in excess of railway tariffs of the year 

 before the interstate commerce law began to protect them 

 against railway despotism — the people then began to look about 

 for a possible cause. That cause was not far to seek. The rail- 

 ways, unable to meet and settle their differences in convention, 

 where each should discuss its own problems and average them 

 with the others, were forced to prepare each its own schedules 

 independently. These separate schedule-tariffs were enforced 

 and collected, and the Interstate Commerce Commission was able 

 to say triumphantly, in its first annual report, that the act had 

 operated directly to increase railroad earnings * in eight months 

 from the approval of the act. 



Why should it not have so operated ? It could not have oper- 

 ated otherwise. That a carrier's rates should be " reasonable " had 

 and has been common law for four hundred years, and by repro- 

 nouncing it the interstate commerce law added nothing to its 

 force. But to be " reasonable " a carrier's rate must not be unfair 

 to either party. If it is unfair to the carrier — if it demands that 

 he perform services for less by way of remuneration than it costs 

 him to do the work — then the rate is certainly not " reasonable." 

 And so it comes about that, by declaring in one paragraph that 

 rates should be " reasonable " and in another that there should be 



* Official edition, p. 41. 



