The regulation of interstate commerce was not a party measure. It had its advocates in both parties, and found its opponents in the railroad lobby that resented any public interference with the business of the roads. The railway owners and directors were slower than the public in accepting the doctrine of the quasi-public nature of their business. It was a powerful argument against them that their size and influence were such that they could and did ruin or enrich individual customers, and that they could make or destroy whole regions of the West. Enough positive proof of favoritism existed to give point to the demand that the business must cease to discriminate.
The Interstate Commerce Act became a law February 4, 1887. It created a commission of five, with a six-year term and the proviso that not more than three of the commissioners should belong to one party. It forbade a group of practices which had resulted in unfair discrimination and gave to the commission considerable powers in investigation and interference. The later interpretation of the law deprived the commission of some of the powers that, it was thought, had been given to it, but during the next nineteen years the Interstate Commerce Commission was a central figure in the solution of the railroad problem. The work of this commission, like the work of irrigation and agriculture, was technical, calling for expert service, and aiding in the process that was changing the character of the National Administration as one function after another was called into service for the first time.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
In 1893 F.J. Turner called attention to the Significance of the Frontier in American History (in American Historical Association, Annual Report, 1893). His theory has been elaborated by F.L. Paxson, The Last American Frontier (1910), and K. Coman, Economic Beginnings of the Far West (1912). There is no good account of the public lands. T. Donaldson, The Public Domain (1881), is inaccurate, antiquated, and clumsy, but has not been supplanted. Many useful tables are in the report of the Public Lands Commission created by President Roosevelt (in 58th Congress, 3d session, Senate Document, No. 189, Serial No. 4766). The general spirit of the frontier in the eighties has been appreciated by Owen Wister, in The Virginian (1902), and Members of the Family (1911), and by E. Talbot, in My People of the Plains (1906). J.A. Lomax has preserved some of its folklore in Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads (1910). The best narratives on the continental railways are J.P. Davis, Union Pacific Railway (1894), and E.V. Smalley, The Northern Pacific Railroad (1883). Many contributory details are in H. Villard, Memoirs (2 vols., 1904), E.P. Oberholtzer, Jay Cooke (2 vols., 1907), and in the appropriate volumes of H.H. Bancroft, Works. L.H. Haney has compiled the formal documents in his Congressional History of Railroads (in Bulletins of the University of Wisconsin, Nos. 211 and 342). The debate over the Isthmian Canal may be read in J.D. Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents; the Foreign relations Reports, 1879-83; L.M. Keasbey, The Nicaragua Canal and the Monroe Doctrine (1896); J.B. Henderson, American Diplomatic Questions (1901); and J. Latané, Diplomatic Relations of the United States and Spanish America (1900).
CHAPTER X
Transportation was a fundamental factor in the two greatest problems of the eighties. In the case of the disappearance of free land and the frontier, it produced phenomena that were most clearly visible in the West, although affecting the whole United States. In the case of concentration of capital and the growth of trusts, its phenomena were mostly in the East, where were to be found the accumulations of capital, the great markets, and the supply of labor.
Through the improvements in communication it became possible to conduct an efficient business in every State and direct it from a single head office. Not only railroad and telegraph helped in this, but telephone, typewriter, the improved processes in photography and printing, and the organization of express service were of importance and touched every aspect of life. Journalism both broadened and concentrated. The effective range of the weeklies and monthlies and even of the city dailies was widened, while the resulting competition tended to weed out the weaker and more local. Illustrations improved and changed the physical appearance of periodical literature.
Social organizations of national scope or ambition took advantage of the new communication. Trade unions, benevolent associations, and professional societies multiplied their annual congresses and conventions, and increased the proportion of the population that knew something of the whole Union. A few periodicals and pattern-makers began to circulate styles, which clothing manufacturers imitated and local shopkeepers sold at retail. Mail-order business was aided by the same conditions. A new uniformity in appearance began to enter American life, weakening the old localisms in dress, speech, and conduct. Until within a few years it had been possible here and there to sit down to dinner "with a gentleman in the dress of the early century—ruffles, even bag-wig complete"; but the new standards were the standards of the mass, and it became increasingly more difficult to keep up an aristocratic seclusion or a style of life much different from that of the community.