Although the decisions are for the most part the unanimous finding of the Commission, the following table distributes the opinions of the year among its members into dismissals and reductions or reparations among the Commissioners writing them:
| Opinion by | Dismissing Complaints | Granting Reductions or Reparation | |
| Chairman Knapp | 21 | 20 | |
| Commissioner | Clement | 16 | 29 |
| " | Prouty | 13 | 40 |
| " | Cockerill | 20 | 20 |
| " | Lane | 20 | 42 |
| " | Clark | 29 | 28 |
| " | Harlan | 19 | 40 |
| Total | 138 | 219 | |
| Per cent | 39.7 | 61.3 | |
Some of the cases upon which the Commission is called on to pass are so trivial as to be beneath the notice of a justice's court, while others involve issues so momentous as to threaten the whole structure of railway rates by which the unparalleled prosperity of the country has been made possible.
But the number of cases reaching the Commission for adjudication is insignificant compared with the grist of informal reparation orders that runs an endless stream through its regulating rollers. In the twelve months from December 1, 1908, to November 30, 1909, these aggregated no less than 2,223 separate orders involving amounts all the way from 47 cents to $14,717.64, as seen in the following orders:
7100. Larabee Flour Mills Company v. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Company. September 11, 1909. Refund of $0.47 on shipment of cotton bags from Kansas City, Mo., to Hutchinson, Kas., on account of excessive rate.
3629. Lackawanna Steel Company v. Central Railroad Company of New Jersey. June 26, 1909. Refund of $14,717.64 on shipments of spiegeleisen from Newark, N. J., and Hazard, Pa., to Buffalo, N. Y., on account of excessive rates.
Multiplying these awards by the number of orders enables the reader to imagine the range of their respective pettiness or portentous possibilities.
It is doubtful if the American people, or even the Interstate Commerce Commissioners themselves, realize how the formal decisions and informal orders of the Commission are slowly but surely whittling away the safe margin of American railway profits. At the rate of two decisions every three days and forty informal orders per week, the work of incipient confiscation proceeds with remorseless enthusiasm.
With the best intentions in the world the present Interstate Commerce Commission is so enmeshed in its own anti-railway traditions, so enamored of the administrative control theories of its statistician, so covetous of unbridled, irresponsible authority to tear down where it has no constructive capacity, that anything like co-operation between the Commission and the railway management for the public good seems out of the question.
To the writer it appears that only blind rejection of facts can find any conserving element in the regulation of railways as at present administered. Signs of a helpful disposition in official acts are entirely lacking. The Senate and House calendars groan under bills for the further regulation and restriction of the railways, but not one contains a promise of relief. For not one is there a genuine public demand.