80 Meyer—Adjustment of Railroad Rates in Prussia. 
All Prussian railroads, then, whether state or private, are 
subject to the jurisdiction of a carefully graded administrative 
system — local, intermediate and central — each part of which is 
organically connected with every other part in such a manner 
that, without interfering with the ability to act promptly in 
cases of emergency, every act not only finds its responsible 
agent, but the central organ can also make its influence felt in 
the remotest branch of the system, and at the same time not. 
transcend its responsibility to the public. This feature of the 
Prussian system will be well illustrated by what follows on the 
question of rates. 
II. 
But before passing on we must consider the relation of the 
federal government to railroads, for it also has extensive 
powers over all the railroads in the empire. 11 All the powers of 
the federal government over railroads may be grouped under five 
heads : 12 
1. The right to legistate. 
2. The right to grant concessions. 
3. The right to control rates. 
4. The right to supervise the building, operation, and admin¬ 
istration of railroads. 
5. The right to employ the railroads for the national defense. 
The federal constitution makes it the duty of the government 
to cause the German railroads to be managed in the interests of 
the general traffic, as a uniform network. 13 The phrase, “ as a 
uniform network,” is an elastic one, and probably would suffice 
to give the federal government most of the powers it exercises 
yet, nine articles 14 of the constitution are either wholly or in 
“There are also federal railroads — those of Elsass-Lothringen— a 
number of which have been rented to Prussia, and a military road from 
Berlin to the shooting grounds at Zossen. The system of rates adopted 
on the federal roads after the Franco-Prussian war exerted considera¬ 
ble influence on the development of systems of rates in Germany. 
12 Eger, Handbuch des Prussischen Eisenbahnrechts. 
13 Reichsverfassung Art. XLII. 
]4 These are Articles IV. 8, VIII. 5, and XLI. to XLVII., inclusive. 
