154 Urdahl—The Present Fee System in the United States . 
PART II. 
THE FEE SYSTEM AS IT EXISTS AT PRESENT. 
To obtain an adequate conception of the present character of 
the fee-system in the United States, it is necessary to keep con¬ 
stantly in mind the economic background, or setting, as it were, 
of the legislation concerning those public functions and activi¬ 
ties which invoke fee-payments. Laws and regulations by them¬ 
selves mean almost nothing, unless they are supplemented by a 
knowledge of the conditions under which they exist. The ab¬ 
sence of slavery is by no means the most important character¬ 
istic of the epoch which begins at the close of the war. The 
great industrial forces, although many of them were in opera¬ 
tion before the war, had not become so powerful that their in¬ 
fluence could be felt and observed as easily as it could be after¬ 
wards. Production on a large scale did exist to some extent 
during the “Fifties;” but concentration of production as we 
know it to-day, was impossible until the modern transportation 
facilities had been developed. The great trans-continental and 
other railroad systems were all of them built immediately be¬ 
fore or after the war; and were, in one sense, the direct causes 
of the expansion of markets from purely local to national limits. 
This market expansion made the development of enormous in¬ 
dustrial centers possible. These two factors, namely, the ex¬ 
pansion of markets, and the growth of cities, form the key, or 
rather the cause, of much of the fee legislation enacted dur¬ 
ing the last forty years. Another great factor to which may 
be traced, either directly or indirectly, most of the remaining 
fee-legislation, is the wonderful expansion and development of 
the West. 1 This expansion brings to the front new issues and 
new subjects requiring regulation, many of which involve the 
payment of fees of one kind or another. 
1 The indirect causes and other elements of this expansion are of little 
or no significance to the subject in hand. 
