III
The movement to regulate railways engaged in interstate commerce has run a similar course. The Interstate Commerce Act passed by Congress in 1887 was the logical sequence of the Supreme Court in the year immediately preceding, in Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway Company v. Illinois, deciding that the states have no right to regulate interstate commerce. Subsequent court decisions, however, so interpreted the act of 1887 as to leave the Interstate Commerce Commission without the substance of power. But successive amendments have in large measure made good its deficiencies and enlarged the scope of its authority. In 1896, the power to compel witnesses to testify was definitely obtained. The Elkins law of 1903 subjected the railway corporations which violate the law as well as their agents to a fine, and made the recipient as well as the giver of a rebate guilty of a misdemeanor. Any departure from the published rate was prohibited. In 1906, the power to fix a maximum rate was expressly granted the commission in addition to the power to declare a rate unreasonable which it already possessed. To prevent "midnight tariffs" thirty days' notice of change in rates was required. In 1910, the commission was empowered to suspend all advances in rates, and an attempt was made to clothe it with greater power in administering the long and short haul clause. The authority to establish and enforce reasonable classifications of property for transportation was also bestowed. Express and sleeping car companies, pipe lines used in transporting oil, and telegraph, telephone and cable companies have been included within the sweep of the law. Once more, plenary power over the accounts of the railways has been granted. Manifestly, if publicity and uniformity of accounts are as important to the solution of the railway problem as many suppose, the most decisive step has been taken.
Moreover, since 1906. it is no longer practicable for the carriers to disobey the orders of the commission with impunity as was previously the case. For cumulative penalties begin to run the moment an order becomes effective unless the carrier secures the intervention of a court. As a consequence, the commission has a certain standing and dignity which it has not hitherto enjoyed. It is probable also that interference by the courts will be less common in the future than in the past. The present law restricts interference to cases where the act complained of is either ultra vires or unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court decisions overruling the pretensions of the Commerce Court indicate that an established place has been won for the commission. Such are some of the more important facts incidental to a movement which has been subjecting railway property to public control in the interest of fair play.[1]
- ↑ Frank Haigh Dixon, "The Interstate Commerce Act as Amended in 1906," Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 21, 1906, pp. 22-51, and the "Mann
