164 THE GRANGER MOVEMENT 



the line. The board decided that, on the whole, five cents 

 was a fair rate and the company accordingly raised its rate 

 between St. Paul and Minneapolis to protect itself from the 

 pro rata clause of the law. 1 



As a result of the unsatisfactory working of the schedule 

 which seems to have been due in part to the law itself, in part 

 to the attempts of the companies to make it unpopular, and in 

 part perhaps to the inexperience and lack of skill of the com- 

 missioners a considerable number of people were doubtless 

 convinced that the rates fixed worked injustice to the companies, 2 

 while many others became disgusted with the attempt to regulate 

 railroads by law and began to look to competition and the 

 construction of waterways for relief. 3 



In the elections in the fall of 1874 the railroad forces were 

 particularly active, while the enthusiasm which had been back 

 of the Granger movement was on the wane. As a result the 

 newly elected legislature contained a majority opposed to the 

 policy of radical railroad legislation which the state had been 

 trying to follow for the preceding four years. It was soon 

 evident that the law was doomed, but there was some question 

 as to what should be put in its place, in order to prevent the 

 appearance of a total surrender of the policy of state super- 

 vision. 4 The final outcome was the enactment of a law which 

 substituted a single elective commissioner with power to inves- 

 tigate and report merely, for the appointive board of three mem- 

 bers which had had power to establish schedules of maximum 

 rates and to enforce their observance. 5 In other words it was 

 a change from a commission of the Illinois type to an advisory 

 commission of the type which prevailed at that time in Ohio 

 and Michigan, and which was also adopted at the end of the 

 Granger period in Iowa and Wisconsin. The law also contained 

 provisions that no railroad company should charge unreasonable 

 rates or should discriminate in charges " f or a like service from 



1 Railroad Commission, Reports, 1874, p. 7; Statement of W. R. Marshall, 

 Minnesota railroad commissioner, in Wisconsin, Senate Journal, 1876, p. 340. 



2 Ibid. 3 Industrial Age, December 26, 1874, p. 5. 

 4 Executive Documents, 1874, i. 29-31. 



6 General Laws, 1875, PP- iSS-^S. 



