RAILWAY LEGISLATION 199 



1876. 1 These provisions, which empowered the general assembly 

 to alter or repeal charters and forbade unreasonable discrimina- 

 tion, do not appear to have been the result of any particular 

 agitation at the time and were not followed up by restrictive 

 legislation until the middle of the next decade. 



The Granger movement for railroad regulation had its origin, 

 as has been seen, in Illinois and the neighboring states of the 

 upper Mississippi Valley during the later sixties. At about the 

 same time another movement for the regulation or rather super- 

 vision of railroads was getting under way in another part of the 

 country. It will be desirable to glance at this movement briefly 

 because its influence was mingled with the Granger influence 

 in the railway legislation of many of the eastern and southern 

 states, and indeed of several of the Granger states themselves 

 after the movement which began there had spent itself. Even 

 before the Civil War, railroad commissions for various purposes 

 had been established in several of the New England states; 

 but it was not until the latter part of the decade 1860-70, when 

 the abuses of railway management were arousing the people 

 throughout the country, that any serious attempt was made 

 to secure state supervision. In 1869 Massachusetts established 

 a railroad commission, to which practically no mandatory 

 authority was given, but which, by the application of the force 

 of publicity, was able to exercise considerable influence over the 

 management of railroads; and this commission, like the manda- 

 tory commission of Illinois established by the laws of 1871 and 

 1873, has served as a model for similar boards in a number of 

 other states. 2 



The movement which led to the establishment of this Massa- 

 chusetts commission seems to have started with the commercial 

 rather than the agricultural class, and no evidence has been found 

 that the order of Patrons of Husbandry in Massachusetts inter- 

 ested itself at all in the subject of railroad regulation during the 

 period. In New Hampshire and Vermont also, the Grangers 



1 Thorpe, Constitutions, i. 504-506. 



2 On the Massachusetts commission, see Adams, Railroads, 137-143; Johnson, 

 American Railway Transportation, 352-355; Massachusetts Railroad Commission, 

 Reports, 1870, et seq.; Cullom Committee, Report, i. 66-71. 



