RAILWAY LEGISLATION 177 



Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul companies, and the statutory 

 rates appear to have been quite generally in force during the 

 succeeding two years. 1 



In the interval which elapsed before the meeting of the next 

 general assembly in 1878, the order of Patrons of Husbandry 

 declined in the state almost to extinction, and its decline was 

 accompanied by a material decrease in popular interest in rail- 

 road regulation. On the other hand, the activity of the railroad 

 forces in working up sentiment in favor of the repeal of the law 

 increased as the chances of success in this way became greater 

 and as the hope that the law might be declared unconstitutional 

 was blasted by the Supreme Court decisions of the fall of 1876. 

 In the summer of 1877, the president of the Illinois Central 

 sent an agent east to enlist the assistance of eastern magazines 

 and newspapers in a campaign for the repeal of the law and the 

 substitution of a commissioner system of regulation similar to 

 that which prevailed in Massachusetts and Minnesota. 2 This 

 agent secured the publication of a long editorial in the New 

 York Tribune setting forth the disastrous effects of the law on 

 the state, and many Iowa newspapers were induced to copy 

 this and thus circulate it among the people it was desired to 

 reach. Other special articles and letters were also furnished 

 to such newspapers as would make use of them, the burden of 

 all being the advantage of the commission system of regulation 

 over a fixed schedule of maximum rates, for the railroad forces 

 now realized that there must be at least a pretense of the reten- 

 tion of state control. Agents were also sent among the people 

 of the state to get in touch with local politicians and work for 

 the nomination and election of candidates favorable to the rail- 

 road interests. 3 The result of this activity and of the decline of 

 Grange influence was seen in the election of a general assembly 

 inclined to favor a repeal or extensive modification of the legis- 

 lation of 1874. 



1 Governor's message, in Legislative Documents, 1878, i. no. i, p. 27; Chicago, 

 Burlington, and Quincy, Annual Reports, 1876, p. n. 



2 See account of this mission by the agent, Charles Aldrich, " Repeal of the Gran- 

 ger Law in Iowa," in Iowa Journal of History and Politics, \\\. 256-270 (April, 1905). 



3 Ibid. 



