50 THE AGRARIAN CRUSADE 



provided for a railroad commissioner. In this 

 instance also the companies denied the validity of 

 the law, and when the state supreme court upheld it 

 in 1873, they appealed to the Supreme Court of the 

 United States. In the meantime there was no 

 way of enforcing the law, and the antagonism to- 

 ward the roads fostered by the Grange and the 

 Anti-Monopoly party became more and more in- 

 tense. In 1874 the legislature replaced the Act of 

 1871 with one modeled on the Illinois law of 1873; 

 but it soon discovered that no workable set of uni- 

 form rates could be made for the State because of 

 the wide variation of conditions in the different 

 sections. Rates and fares which would be just to 

 the companies in the frontier regions of the State 

 would be extortionate in the thickly populated 

 areas. This difficulty could have been avoided by 

 giving the commission power to establish varying 

 schedules for different sections of the same road; 

 but the anti-railroad sentiment was beginning to 

 die down, and the Legislature of 1875, instead of 

 trying to improve the law, abandoned the attempt 

 at state regulation. 



The Granger laws of Iowa and Wisconsin, both 

 enacted in 1874, attempted to establish maxi- 

 mum rates by direct legislative action, although 



