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"You see Steve has a remarkable power of storing things up in that big head of his. Remembers a lot of pesky little detail when he's once fixed his mind on it, the prices of things, figures, and distances, and rates and differentials. Mr. Mason that was the traffic manager of our road happened to take Steve to Buffalo with him about some rate-making business.
Impelled, then, by such force as the Grange and similar organizations supplied, the western states proceeded to the adoption of laws whose purposes ordinarily included railroad rate-making by the legislature or by a commission, the doing away with such abuses as discrimination, and the prohibition of free passes. The railroads promptly opposed the laws and carried the battle to the courts.
As, for example, on the American railways at present, where the rate-making power is in the hands of a public body; or in the case of the English coal mines, where the question of control is comparatively simple, and the occasion for control plain.
It's a little too much like a boycott it gives them too much the appearance of a combination in restraint of trade. Tariff and rate-making associations are proper and necessary, but to attempt to dictate to agents what companies they shall not represent or at any event penalize them for so doing is going pretty far. No, I didn't think they'd dare."
We'll take the L. & G. W., swing it over to the east from the Elk Fork up, make a junction with Pendleton's Pacific Division, and, in one week after we get trains running, we'll have the freight combine here shot so full of holes that it won't hold corn-stalks! That's what we'll do: we'll do a little rate-making ourselves; and we'll make this danger the best thing that ever happened to us.
Most important, however, among the provisions of the Act was that in relation to rate-making, which not only empowered the Commission to hear complaints that rates were unjust or unreasonable, but even enabled it to determine what would be a just and reasonable charge in the case, and to order the carrier complained of to adhere to the new rate.
The railroad companies suffer more from this piecemeal and conflicting regulation than do corporations engaged in manufacturing operations, not only because they discharge a peculiarly public function, but because their business, particularly in its rate-making aspect, suffers severely from any division by arbitrary geographical lines.
Broadly speaking, the history of legislation has been as follows: The States have usually exercised their rate-making power through a railroad or corporation commission. New York and Virginia now employ the more comprehensive phrase "public service" or "corporation" commission. The Massachusetts statute, like the Granger statutes, dates from 1874.
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