RAILWAY LEGISLATION 179 



of certainty. Whichever may have been the case, the law was 

 accepted by the people and for a number of years it seems to 

 have given quite general satisfaction. 1 Undoubtedly the 

 attitude of railroad officials toward shippers and the public in 

 general was very different from what it had been before the 

 passage of the Granger law and the Supreme Court decisions 

 of 1876, and, as a general rule, the new railroad commission 

 had little difficulty in inducing the companies to remedy such 

 grievances as it found worthy of presentation. Thus if it had 

 no other results, the Granger agitation at least brought about 

 a better understanding of the rights of shippers and the public 

 and the duties of transportation companies, which showed 

 itself in the more conciliatory attitude of the railroads. Abuses 

 in railway management continued to exist, nevertheless, and 

 early in the next decade another agitation was started which 

 culminated in the law of 1888 establishing a commission with 

 power, the law which is still in operation in the state. 2 This 

 movement in the eighties is outside the scope of this work, but 

 it undoubtedly builded largely upon and was profoundly affected 

 by the Granger movement of the previous decade. 



WISCONSIN 



The convention which framed a constitution for the new state 

 of Wisconsin in 1848, mindful of the Dartmouth College decision, 

 inserted a reservation in the article of that instrument concerning 

 the creation of corporations which provided that " all general 

 laws or special acts, enacted under the provisions of this section, 

 may be altered or repealed by the legislature at any time after 

 their passage." 3 



Even during the fifties, when the prevalent desire for railroads 

 was leading counties, towns, cities, and even individuals to adopt 

 generous but ill-advised measures to encourage their construction, 



1 Cullom Committee, Report, ii. 945-948; Dixon, State Railroad Control, part 

 ii; Appleton's Cyclopedia, 1879, p. 314; Governor's message in Legislative Docu- 

 ments, 1880, i. no. i, p. 28. 



2 Larrabee, Railroad Question, 336-342; Dixon, State Railroad Control, part iii. 

 ch. i. 



3 Article XI, section i. 



