GEOGRAPHIC LITERATURE" 



Eleventh Annual Report of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Advance 

 copy without appendices. Pp. 150. Washington: Government Print- 

 ing Office. 1897. 



It was to be expected that the first report of the Interstate Commerce 

 Commission issued after the rendering of the recent far-reaching decis- 

 ions of the Supreme Court would he an interesting one. and such it proves. 



The Interstate Commerce Commission has never claimed rate-making 

 authority, but from its organization until early in 1897 it acted in accord- 

 ance with the belief that when the legality of a rate, established in the 

 first instance by a carrier subject to the act to regulate commerce, had 

 been questioned by those interested, and the issue determined adversely 

 to the carrier upon facts and arguments brought out during a formal in- 

 vestigation and hearing, of- which both parties had had suitable notice 

 and at which they had had opportunity to introduce testimony and cross- 

 examine witnesses, it then became its duty, not merely to declare the 

 particular rate excessive or unreasonable, and consequently unlawful, but, 

 in addition, to decide what rate would be right, and subsequently to en- 

 force, in the manner provided in the law, the latter rate. Congress, it 

 was supposed by the Commission, had by implication granted this power 

 as a necessary incident of express authority to execute and enforce an act 

 requiring that all rates shall be reasonable and just. In a decision ren- 

 dered during May, 1897, the United States Supreme Court declared this 

 to be a misconception of the purpose and meaning of the act, and 

 that Congress did not confer upon the Commission the limited authority 

 to prescribe future charges which it had supposed itself to possess. Ac- 

 cepting this interpretation, the Commission believes that the same rule 

 will be found, when occasion arises, to leave that body without authority, 

 in the absence of amendatory legislation, to enforce any order to prevent 

 unjust discrimination or undue preference in the future. The result is 

 thus stated in the report : 



" The other sections and provisions of the law are in aid of and 

 were intended to make effective the first three sections, which re- 

 late to and were intended to make unlawful and to prohibit unrea- 

 sonable charges, unjust discriminations, and undue preferences; 

 and without authority to make these three sections effective in the 

 future practically all the Commission can do toward executing and 

 enforcing the vital provisions of the act is to inquire into wrongs 

 done in the past and report the result of its investigation to itself." 



The inadequacy of so restricted a remedy for the evils incident to cur- 

 rent methods of railway rate-making is obvious. The farmers who pro- 

 duce grain, cotton, live stock, and other commodities entering largely 

 into interstate commerce are not as a rule shippers. They sell to dealers 

 upon the basis of current rates, whether reasonable or the reverse, and 



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