Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 18.pdf/30

 RATE REGULATION master-General of the restrictions and obli gations required by this act." By a similar method all railroad corporalions could be required to expressly assent to any methods provided by law for fixing rates, or else driven out of business. No •court could interfere. There is no question •of power — it is only one of exigency or popular determination. Such extreme measures of legislation as .are above suggested are not likely to be resorted to in the pending and future con flicts between the railroads and the people; -although it is well for the former to con template the possibility of their adoption. Unquestionable and unobjectionable powers •of the states and Congress exist to enact all legislation which is now proposed — such -as we are now considering. Congress may provide that the Interstate •Commerce Commission may make remedial rates and put them immediately in force. The courts may restrain and annul those rates if they find they are confiscatory, and Congress cannot take away that power •except by extreme legislation. Congress cannot confer upon the courts the discre tionary power to make remedial rates but •can confer upon the courts the judicial power to declare a given rate extortionate; and possibly without legislation the courts possess this latter power, which cannot be taken away except by extreme legisla tion. Under these practical conditions affecting legislation it seems to be reasonably clear that the legislation which should be passed is that recommended by President Roose velt. It is intolerable that the railroads which are monopolies controlling 200,000 -miles of transportation, with competition •obsolete, should be allowed to tax the people of this country two thousand mil lions of dollars annually with power to in crease the rate of taxation and the amount of money raised, without restraint or limi tation other than that which may be selfimposed by the fear that increased rates

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will altogether stop the traffic in the articles too heavily burdened. The power now sought for the Interstate Commerce Commission, it was universally believed, was given in the original act of 1887, and it was exercised by the Commis sion, but the decision of the court in Inter state Commerce Commission v. Texas Pa cific R. Co., 167 U. S. 479, destroyed it, because although Congress had the author ity to grant the power, it had not in fact done so. When next unmistakably given no harm will happen because the courts will still possess all the power they ever had to de clare any given rate confiscatory and annul it. On the other hand, it is a fatal objection to the proposition of the railroads allowing only a court to interfere with rates which they may fix and put in operation, that the court will not interfere with a rate merely because it may seem too high to the judge who tries the case; that the court will only act when it clearly appears that the rate is grossly extortionate; that the proceedings in court will be sure to be fatally dilatory; and that when the court reaches a conclu sion condemning the rate fixed by the rail roads it will not have the power to fix a remedial rate. What is wanted is a controlling body which can decide the practical question what rate on the whole is fair and just to the patrons of the railroads and to the railroads themselves — what the railroad service is reasonably worth. A tribunal which can only act by decid ing as a judicial question that one rate is grossly extortionate and another rate is confiscatory of the railroad property will utterly fail to meet the just demands of the passengers and shippers for whose bene fit primarily our vast railroad system has been constructed through the organization of huge corporations and the exercise of the high governmental power of eminent do main in the taking of private land for pub lic use throughout the whole country.