812 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cultural products have been secured, it is yet true that numerous 

 individuals and communities had suffered grievous injury through 

 unjust discriminations in the charges for railway service. 



Unjust discrimination in railway charges being the evil that 

 Congress intended to eradicate by the Interstate Commerce Law, 

 the extent in which that result has been accomplished during the 

 ten years since its enactment must be the measure of its success. 

 If it has not materially diminished the unjust rate-making prac- 

 tices formerly so prevalent it will be fruitless to plead that it has, 

 through the annual reports of the commission appointed for its 

 enforcement, provided several volumes of most valuable and prac- 

 tical discussions of railway problems ; that through a clause which 

 has no direct connection with its substance, and might as well 

 have been an independent enactment, it has given desirable im- 

 petus to the application of safety appliances to cars and trains ; 

 or even that in spite of limitations voluntarily imposed by the 

 commission it has secured the compilation, under the skillful 

 direction of a most accomplished statistician, of a mass of statis- 

 tical information regarding the business of railway transporta- 

 tion that is of great utility to the student and may become an 

 important factor in securing wise and adequate legislation. 



The means that Congress provided for the prevention of unjust 

 discriminations in charges were threefold, viz. : 



First, a summary process for hearing and adjudicating com- 

 plaints and enforcing relief ; second, publicity of railway methods 

 and accounts ; third, perpetual competition among railways. 



Though the tentative character of the law was acknowledged 

 by the most vehement of its partisans, there has been as yet no 

 amendment in any way modifying these fundamental principles. 

 Those that have been passed adding the penalty of imprison- 

 ment to that of a mere fine for violation of its clauses ; extending 

 the provisions requiring filing and publicity to rate schedules, in 

 which two or more carriers join ; requiring public notice of reduc- 

 tions as well as of advances in charges ; and relating to procedure 

 have been at the direct instance of the commission and were 

 advocated in its reports. 



The first remedy lingers a living death in the reports of the 

 Interstate Commerce Commission, and it may yet be resuscitated 

 by suitable legislation, but it was deprived of all practical force, 

 except as a contributor to publicity, when, in the first action 

 brought to secure a decree enforcing an order made by the com- 

 mission, a Federal court, in a decision that has been followed 

 uniformly ever since, claimed the right to go into the matter at 

 issue between the defendant railway and the complainant before 

 the commission de novo, to hear new testimony if offered, to 

 allow the railway to adopt a new line of defense, and to consider 



