A COLORADO RAILROAD POOL 147 
be advanced. It would be impossible for the Santa Fe to make a contract 
with one road which it would not be obliged to make with every other 
parallel road, and hence freight rates would have to be put up high 
enough to maintain two roads instead of one when one road was all 
that was needed to do the business. The cost of traffic would in this 
way be increased and the freight would have to pay it. 
3. The legislation proposed by this bill was not required by sec. 6 
of Art. XV of the constitution of the state. Unreasonable discrimination 
only is prohibited by the common law and the constitution as stated 
in the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the matter of these 
two railroads... The committee held that the bill sought to prevent a 
reasonable discrimination. It did not seek to reduce rates but aimed 
only to put the Denver and New Orleans Railroad in the same position 
as the Denver and Rio Grande with regard to through traffic. The 
committee said this was manifestly impossible till it was shown that the 
roads were in the same relative position as to ability to render the service. 
The committee also quoted from the law that had been but recently passed 
by the legislature and which provided that “ No railroad company shall 
without the written approval of said (railroad) commissioner charge, 
demand, or receive from any person, company, or corporation, for the 
transportation of persons or property, or for any other service, a greater 
sum than it shall . . . . charge, demand, or receive from any other 
person, company, or corporation, for a like service, from the same place 
or upon like conditions, and under similar circumstances.”? ‘This act 
the committee thought answered both the common law and the constitu- 
tion of Colorado. 
4. It was not claimed according to the memorandum of the com- 
mittee that this bill would if enacted into law increase in the slightest 
degree the freight traffic of the state. It was considered a scheme to 
take traffic from the Denver and Rio Grande and give it to the Denver 
and New Orleans—a railroad which had not earned the business. The 
bill would also allow foreign companies to build to the Colorado lines 
of railroad and force a connection with them in order to reach the com- 
mercial centers. 
5. A railroad company, to do business beyond its own terminus, 
tro U.S., 667. 2 Laws of Colorado, 1885, p. 309, Sec. 7. 
