332 THE POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY. 



EAILEOADS AXD TEADE-CENTEES. 



By APPLETON MOEGAK 



IF, a century or so from now, a student of the political history of 

 the United States shall ask, IIow happened it that its Congress was 

 once moved to establish a court of star-chamber aimed at an industry 

 not ordinarily operated except by charter ; a court which was to be 

 not only an oyer and terminer, but an inquisitor of its own motion ; 

 which should dispense with due process of law or with any process at 

 all ; which should supply penalties, civil, criminal, and as for contempt 

 with plentiful liberality ; but never assume, nay, never so much as hint 

 or suggest a probable or even possible protection or premium upon any 

 probable or even possible good or useful thing to be by any accident 

 done or subserved by that industry — if, we say, the political student 

 should ask that question, in view of the fact that no public interest 

 seemed to have required such a statute, and that its immediate effect 

 was to raise freight rates to the people passing the law — the lawyer 

 of that date might suggest possibly that an application of the rule of 

 interpretation, which provides that the intention of the framers of a 

 statute may be looked into (under certain restrictions), would be most 

 likely to furnish some sort of a clew. 



Should the inquirer then cast about for this intention, he might 

 perhaps light upon the following (which I clip from a morning paper) : 



" Springfield, III., June 30. — At a meeting of the Illinois Grain 

 Merchants' Association yesterday. Senator Cullom was called upon to 

 speak on the Interstate Commerce law. He said : ' . . . The require- 

 ments of the law that all charges shall be reasonable, and that there 

 shall be no unjust discrimination or unreasonable advantage or prefer- 

 ence in favor of any person or place, had been shown by the character 

 of the complaints against the enforcement of the act to be absolutely 

 demanded.' In reference to the long and short haul clause, he said : 

 ' For many years the railroads of the country have so absolutely con- 

 trolled our interstate commerce that ice have no means ofJcnowing 

 what are the natural channels of trade, or lohat icoidd he the effect of 

 the natural laics of trade upon many, at least, of the present commercial 

 centers. What the critics of the law call natural centers of trade are 

 centers created hy railroad favoritism \chich has diverted trade from 

 its natural chanyxels into artificial ones at the c^rpense of less favored 

 localities.^ " [The italics here are ours.] 



In reading the above, the student of political history aforesaid 

 might be led to remark that to centralize and to submit to the espion- 

 age of a simple paternal commission of this Government, not only the 

 entire railway interests of the United States (being its operation of 

 125,379 miles of railway, with a funded debt of $3,GG9,005,722, upon 



