INTERSTATE COMMERCE ACT 



3023 



INTESTACY 



Act was passed, and with several later amend- 

 ments has been the means of such fair regula- 

 tion of commerce that transportation com- 

 panies and other interstate corporations, once 

 openly opposed to the law, are now, with rare 

 exceptions, working in complete harmony with 

 those who administer it. For nearly twenty 

 years its administration was discouragingly 

 weak by lack of sufficient power and authority 

 back of the statute, but sundry amendments 

 have remedied these defects. Some of the dis- 

 tinctive features of the act in its present form 

 are the following: 



( 1 ) The operation of the law is in the hands of 

 the Interstate Commerce Commission (see be- 

 low). 



(2) Amendments in 1896 extended the scope 

 of the law so that it covers all common carriers, 

 such as sleeping car companies, telegraph, cable 

 and telephone companies, express companies and 

 pipe lines. Only railroads were embraced in the 

 original act. 



(3) Higher proportionate rates cannot be 

 charged for a short distance than for a long haul, 

 except in unusual cases and then only by permis- 

 sion, publicly granted. 



(4) Any agreement between carriers which 

 provides for pooling of traffic and division of 

 profits is illegal. 



(5) All rates are to be made public before be- 

 coming effective and are not to be changed with- 

 out permission. If the Commission believes any 

 rate is too high, it may arbitrarily reduce that 

 rate, but its action is subject to review by the 

 courts, to insure justice. 



(6) Rebating is made punishable by fines which 

 may be assessed to an amount as high as $20,000. 



(7) The Commission has power to prescribe 

 uniform methods of accounting, and its employees 

 are given access to the books of record of any 

 company on demand. 



(8) The number of working hours per day on 

 common carriers is limited to eight. 



(9) Offenses against any provision of the act 

 are misdemeanors. 



1 Interstate Commerce Commission. To en- 

 force the provisions of the Interstate Com- 

 merce Act a permanent commission of five 

 members was created; this was increased to 

 seven, then in 1915 to nine, members. These 

 members are appointed for seven years by the 

 President with the approval of the Senate, and 

 are prohibited from engaging in any other busi- 

 ness or employment during their terms of office. 

 The membet whose term- first expires usually is 

 chairman of the Commission. The salary is 

 $10,000 per year. 



The Commission has extensive power to 

 inquire into the management of the affairs of 

 all common carriers transacting interstate busi- 

 ness. The traffic which comes under its obser- 

 vation is enormous, the railroads carrying more 



than 1,500,000,000 tons of freight and about 

 900,000,000 passengers each year, over 250,000 

 miles of rails; this is but one side of the Com- 

 mission's interests, although the most impor- 

 tant. During a year nearly a thousand formal 

 complaints respecting the manner in which 

 the country's immense volume of interstate 

 business is transacted are filed with the Com- 

 mission. All of these are made public as soon 

 as filed. Much of the time of the Commission 

 is consumed in the interpretation of interstate 

 commerce laws. A court will not recognize a 

 case until legal action has been commenced 

 on it, but the Interstate Commerce Commis- 

 sion is always ready to make rulings on cases 

 which might possibly arise, and thus interested 

 parties learn in advance what the Commission 

 believes it is legal for them to do. The Com- 

 mission is required to report to the Attorney- 

 General of the United States all cases that 

 come to its notice of violations of criminal 

 sections of the interstate commerce laws. 



A special judicial tribunal, the United States 

 Commerce Court, was established in 1910 as 

 an auxiliary to the Interstate Commerce Com- 

 mission, but this was abolished by act of Con- 

 gress in 1913, and its jurisdiction was vested 

 in and transferred to the several United States 

 District Courts. Provision was made that its 

 judges should be continued as circuit judges 

 and assigned to duty in the several Circuit 

 Courts of Appeal, and that after an office be- 

 came vacant by reason of the decease of the 

 incumbent or for other reasons it should be 

 abolished. E.D.F. 



INTERVENTION, the forceful interference 

 of a nation in the internal affairs of another 

 sovereign state. This phase of international 

 relations is illustrated by the action of the 

 United States government in April, 1898, when, 

 in the interest of humanity, it made a formal 

 demand on Spain to withdraw its troops from 

 the island of Cuba, then in insurrection (see 

 CUBA, subhead History}. According to inter- 

 national law a state may intervene in the 

 concerns of another whenever the latter is con- 

 ducting its affairs in such a way as to threaten 

 the peace and safety or to injure the property 

 and persons of citizens of the intervening state. 

 By many authorities it is believed that inter- 

 vention is also justified on moral grounds, such 

 as the prevention of useless bloodshed. 



INTESTACY, intes'tasi, in law, the state 

 or condition of dying without leaving a will, 

 or of leaving a will that has such defects as to 

 render it illegal. The person is said in that 



