Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/139

119 THE BICYCLE AND THE COMMON CARRIER. II9 THE BICYCLE AND THE COMMON CARRIER. BICYCLING has introduced into the law of common car- riers a question of curious interest, and if it has not made new law it has at least furnished another interesting example of what has long been the chief boast and glory of our common law, — the flexibiUty of its precedents and the adaptability of its general principles to new facts and changed conditions. The particular point to which now we call attention is whether or not a common carrier, irrespective of statute, is bound to carry a passenger's bicycle as his baggage, and therefore without extra compensation. Most railroads have arbitrarily refused to do so, and have demanded small sums for their transportation ; and passengers have submitted to this trifling extortion rather than be bothered with a vexatious lawsuit over pennies. Therefore, in considering this question we are, with a single exception, without direct precedent, and may look at it as an original question. This exception is a rather unsatisfactory decision given in May of the last year by the St. Louis Court of Appeals,^ to the effect that under a statute which provided that the charges of the carrier for transportation of a traveller should include the carriage of one hundred pounds of " ordinary baggage," a passenger was not entitled to have his bicycle (which weighed only thirty pounds) carried, and in spite of this statute the carrier was justified in " fixing a special charge for the transportation over its railroad of from the category of ordinary baggage." The opinion of the court is not altogether convincing and free from doubt. They accept the general definition of Lord Chief Jus- tice Cockburn in Macrow v. Great Western Railway ,2 " Whatever the passenger takes with him for his personal use or convenience, according to the habits of the particular class to which he belongs, either with reference to the immediate necessities or the ultimate 1 Missouri v. Mo. Pacific Ry. Co., 71 Mo. App. 385. See also 31 American Law Review, 463. » L. R. 6 Q. B. 612. 16
 * bicycles, tricycles, and baby carriages,' and excluding all these