RAILWAY LEGISLATION 



enactments of nearly every state which has attempted to solve 

 the problem, either during the period or since. Several of the 

 principal features of American railway legislation can be looked 

 upon as primarily Granger in their origin. Among these are 

 (i) the establishment of schedules of maximum rates by direct 

 legislative enactment, a method which has been generally 

 superseded so far as freight charges are concerned by (2) the 

 establishment of a commission with authority to draw up sched- 

 ules of maximum rates; (3) the establishment of the maximum 

 rates, whether fixed by the legislature or by a commission, as 

 prima facie evidence oi reasonableness before the courts; (4) the 

 attempt to prevent discrimination between places by pro rata 

 or " short haul " clauses; (5) the attempt to preserve competi- 

 tion by forbidding the consolidation of parallel lines; (6) the 

 prohibition of the granting of free passes to public officials. 

 Some of these features have been found by experience to be 

 unsatisfactory or inconsistent with each other for example 

 the attempt to preserve competition as a vital force in keeping 

 down rates and at the same time to prevent discrimination 

 between places has been practically a failure but, on the 

 whole, it is not too much to say that the fundamental principles 

 upon which American regulation of railroads by legislation has 

 developed were first worked out in the Granger states of the 

 Northwest during the decade of the seventies. 



