250 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



declaration above quoted. Evidently they are entitled to all that this declaration 

 implies ; the equal rights of all in terminal and transportation facilities should be 

 most sacredly guarded, and as other highways created by any public authority 

 can be abolished only by the same authority, so this highway created by the 

 State, can be abolished only by State authority. 



The railroad company stands before the public in the double capacity of the 

 authorized owner of a thoroughfare and of a common carrier. In the former 

 capacity it is similar to a canal, a turnpike or a bridge company, each of which 

 owns a thoroughfare and collects tolls from all who use it, and in the latter ca- 

 pacity it belongs to the same class as the owners of packet Imes and ferry boats, 

 of stages, hacks and drays, who charge their customers according to the service 

 rendered. As to canals, turnpikes and bridges, the universal practice is to limit 

 the tolls upon them either in the charters of the companies or by general laws. If 

 this were not done, their owners could, by exorbitant and discriminating charges, 

 not only impose grievous and unequal burdens upon the people, but they could 

 utterly annihilate the public highway feature in these thoroughfares, and it is to 

 prevent this that tolls are limited by law. This being done, the free competition 

 between a multitude of carriers along each one of them, and all accommodating 

 the same points upon them, would seem to render any statutory limitation of car- 

 riers' rates unnecessary. Nevertheless, this restriction is frequently imposed, 

 and as if to show that the right of the law-making power to restrict carriers' rates 

 is absolutely indisputable, it is most frequently done in the very case where com- 

 petition is the most free, most active and most persistent, viz.: in the case of 

 hackmen on the streets of a city. If it be necessary to so carefully guard the 

 public interest against the evils necessarily resulting from private ownership in 

 public thoroughfares, and against the greed of carriers, in these less important 

 cases, where the injury would be in each case so slight, and would be felt by so 

 i^^ people, it certainly is much more necessary in this case where one particular 

 kind of thoroughfare controls the inland transportation of the entire common- 

 wealth, and affects the cost of living of every family within its limits; a highway 

 upon which one and the same party collects both the tolls for the use of the road 

 and the pay of the carrier, and has^ in practice, excluded the total benefit of a 

 general competition and converted a partial one into a positive evil. That the 

 public mind apprehends the dangers of the situation and would guard against 

 them is made evident by the statutes intended to prevent combined ownership in 

 competing lines ; and that it regards the regulation of rates as essential to the 

 preservation of the public highway feature in railroads is unmistakably indicated 

 in the very section of our Constitution which declares them to be public high- 

 ways, the whole of which reads as follows : 



"Railways heretofore constructed, or that may hereafter be constructed in 

 this State, are hereby declared public highways, and railroad companies com- 

 mon carriers. The General Assembly shall pass laws to correct abuses and pre- 

 vent unjust discrimination and extortion in the rates of freight and passenger 

 tariffs on the different railroads in this State; and shall from time to time pass 



