Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 3.djvu/189

 two General Assemblies and the committees of that branch of the Legislature were made up largely with reference to friendliness to railroad restriction.

Governor Larrabee had long been a recognized leader in the State Senate and was conservative as to railroad legislation. His first term as Chief Executive of the State was nearing its end before events convinced him of the need of legislation which later he did so much to promote. Most men become more conservative under official responsibility; but Governor Larrabee had the genius of a thorough business man and the conscience of a New Englander of Puritan stock. When he became the Executive of the people of Iowa in business affairs, it was inevitable that he should have a clear insight into their rights and an invincible determination to secure and safeguard their interests.

The test came in the Glenwood coal case. The railroads charged a rate for transporting coal to a State institution which the Governor believed to be excessive, unjust and discriminating. He determined to resist the over-charge and appealed to the Board of Railway Commissioners, the tribunal created by the Legislature of 1878, which he had helped to enact as a substitute for direct legislative control of railways. The Commissioners decided that they had no power to remedy the abuse complained of, that their functions were merely advisory. That decision convinced the Governor of the inefficiency of the Railway Commission and the necessity of clothing the tribunal with some real power to remedy wrongs. From this time Governor Larrabee became the leader of the movement for legislative control of railways, of which prior to that time he had apparently been a disinterested observer.

In the appointment of Ex-Lieutenant Governor Frank T. Campbell a member of the Board of Railway Commissioners, Governor Larrabee had selected the able leader of railroad control who led the contest in the enactment of the Grange legislation many years before. The Governor