"YOU ARE A—SENATOR"
How to control the men who control the highways?
The railroads have become the main rivers of trade and travel, and to control them has become one of our hardest problems in the field where politics and industry meet. The Duke of Wellington exhorted Parliament "not to forget, in legislating upon this subject, the old idea of the King's Highway." But here, as well as there, the little respect paid by the Legislature at first to this idea soon vanished. In England, as well as in America, the State, in giving some citizens the right, for their private profit, to take the property of others by force, legally, for railways, began by limiting strictly the power so acquired. Then, passing under the control of that which it had created, the State abandoned its attempts to control. Now the State is retracing its way, and for many years has been struggling painfully to recover its lost authority. In the first English charters there were the minutest regulations as to freight and passenger charges, and the right of citizens generally to put their own cars on the tracks was sacredly guarded.
The railroads became too strong to submit to this, and the success with which the teachings of Adam Smith were applied to the abolition of the old-fashioned restraints on trade bred a furor against any social control of industry. These limitations were left out of new charters, and for fair play were revised out of the old charters. After a brief dream of this laissez faire, England began, in 1844, investigating and legislating, and, after nearly thirty years of experiments and failures, established the railway commission in 1873. This was a step forward, but has not proved the solvent it was expected to be. The expense of getting a decision from the commission and the courts to which the road can appeal from the commission has frightened people from making complaints. "A complainant," says Hadley, "is a marked man, and the commission cannot protect him against the vengeance of the railroads. A town fares no better ... even the [British] War Department is afraid. It has grievances, but it dares not make them public for fear of reprisals."[554]
The course of events in the United States was much the same. The first railroad powers were carefully limited. The early charters regulated the charges, limited the profits, gave citizens the right to put their private carriages on the road, and reserved to the State the right to take possession of the railroad upon proper payment. But as early as 1846 the railroads had grown strong enough—in the revision of the Constitution of New York, for example—to secure an almost complete surrender of these public safe-guards.[555]
But it was seen immediately in America, as in England, that the new institution could not be left in the uncontrolled hands of individuals. It created simultaneously two revolutions, each one of the most momentous in modern civilization. It made the steam-engine master in transportation, as it had already become in manufacturing. It made the public highways the private property of a few citizens. An agitation arose among the people—to-day stronger because more necessary than ever—and they began to seek what they have not yet found: means of regulating the relations between new rich and new poor, and protecting the private interests of all from the private interests of the few who had this double sovereignty. As early as 1857 New York established a commission for the regulation of the railways. But the railroads within a year procured a law abolishing it, bribing the leading commissioner to make no opposition in consideration of receiving from them $25,000, the whole amount of his salary for five years. "I was the attorney of the Erie Railway at that time; I specially used to attend to legislation that they desired to effect or oppose.... I remember the appointment of that commission.... We agreed that if they" (the leading railroad commissioner) "would not oppose the repeal of the law we would pay $25,000, and have done with the commission; it was embarrassing.... The law was repealed, and we paid the money, I think." "If the commission had been a useless one," said the counsel of the New York Chamber of Commerce before the Legislative Committee, "the railroads would not have parted with their money to get rid of it."[556]
Thirty of the States and Territories of the Union had established commissions or passed laws to regulate the railroads before Congress, in 1887, used its power under the Constitution to regulate commerce among the States, and passed the Interstate Commerce law, establishing the National Interstate Commerce Commission, in the hope that it might protect the people. Congress did not act until 1887, although for years different sections of the public, in their efforts to find a cure for the new evils which had come with the new good, had sought to set in action their representatives in Washington. The "Granger movement" of 1871, 1872, and 1873, with its "Granger legislation" by the States against the railroads, is one of the never-to-be-forgotten waves of public commotion over this problem which took on its acutest form in the oil regions. Illinois, California, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, and Iowa established railway commissions, or put stringent regulations on the statute-books at this time. Public opinion did not cease to demand action by the national government under the constitutional power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce, and became clamorous. Petitions poured in by the hundreds, public meetings were held, chambers of commerce and boards of trade and anti-monopoly conventions passed resolutions of urgency. This was one of the main issues in the election of the 44th Congress.