Railroad commission

“ The people of Canada have, since the political union of the colonies, pursued an exceedingly liberal policy toward their railroads, but it appears that the great indulgence of the government only bred license in railroad circles. The evil increased from year to year, until the many complaints on the part of the public against railroad management caused Parliament in 1886 to appoint a commission to examine into the alleged abuses and to report as to the advisability of the adoption of a general railroad law, and the appointment of a Board of Railroad Commissioners. ”

“ I see nothing to prevent its going to the point of requiring a license and bringing the whole business under the control of a railroad commission so far as to determine the number, character and conduct of transportation companies and so to prevent the streets from being made useless and dangerous by the number and lawlessness of those who seek to use them. ”

“ Not ten per cent of the agents of the railroads obey this law. Ninety per cent of them constantly violate it. Ask any drummer who travels through the state! Talk about obedience to the little one-hoss Railroad Commission? Why, here is a statute of the Code of Georgia, passed by the sovereign Legislature and signed by the Governor, and the railroads treat it as a dirty piece of waste paper.
In his letter, ex-Chairman Brown says that the railroads have never put into operation an order of the Commission as to freight rates, unless that order was absolutely satisfactory to themselves. ”

“ This railroad president is a man of the highest character and of very extensive information. Whether or no he is rightly informed in respect to the appointment of commissioners, it is clear that the railroad representation in the Senate could bring tremendous pressure to bear to secure the appointment of men approved by railroad interests, that they could block the appointment of any other sort of men even if nominated, and that the temptation to exert this power to secure men who could be controlled would be practically irresistible if the Commission were given the rate-making power. ”

“ In the absence of power to compel coordination between the modes of transportation and in the presence of the probable gains in operative efficiency from unified management, we think the Commission, in view of the limitations on the railroad's motor service, is entitled to conclude that the public will be better served by the rail operation than by use of the available motor carrier facilities. ”

“ Upon the principles decided in these cases, a state railroad commission has the right, under a state statute, so far as railroads are concerned, to compel a company to stop its trains under the circumstances already referred to, and it may order the stoppage of such trains if the company does not otherwise furnish proper and adequate accommodation to a particular locality, and in such cases the order may embrace a through interstate train actually running, and compel it to stop at a locality named. ”

“ It would seem, therefore, that inspection by the companies themselves has not been sufficient. It certainly has not been enough to prevent two hundred disasters in ten years. It is the custom in several of the United States to maintain what is termed a railroad commission. The original intention seems to have been for these commissions to keep the railroads under some kind of inspection, and in some way to assist in settling any questions that might arise between different companies, and between railroad companies and the public. ”

“ Congress has withheld from the Commission any power to authorize abandonment of certain types of railroad lines. It is hardly enough to say that the Commission's orders may be set aside by the courts where the Commission exceeds its authority. The Commission has a special competence to deal with the transportation problems which are reflected in these questions. The Congress has entrusted to the Commission the initial responsibility for determining through application of the statutory standards the appropriate line between the federal and state domains. ”

“ It is also agreed that no classification of the railroad tracks under the laws of the state of 1920, under section 21, chapter 104, nor otherwise, has ever been made by the Railroad Commission, with reference to the operation of the express company or of any other express company over the tracks ”

“ Until the Interstate Commerce Commission shall have acted under paragraphs 18 to 21 of section 402 of the Transportation Act. the respondent railways cannot be required to provide a new interstate union station and to extend their main tracks thereto as ordered by the state Railroad Commission. ”

“ The creation of railroad commissions in the various States, and the more recent establishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission under the provisions of an act prohibiting these discriminations, forbidding the charging more for a longer than for a shorter haul, and inflicting a severe penalty for making railroad pools, goes far to remedy many of the most glaring evils complained of. ”

“ Between those points the railroad will operate like any motor carrier. The service which it seeks to render is not a combined rail-and-truck service. As the Commission states in its report in the present case, 'The railroad, through its subsidiary, merely seeks the substitution of a more efficient for a less efficient means of service.' This 'substituted' service differs from the adequate independent motor carrier service already existing only in its being under railroad control. ”

“ Paragraph 22 in no way affects the power conferred by paragraph 9. By its terms, it operates as a limitation only upon the authority conferred upon the Commission in 1920 by paragraphs 18 to 21. These paragraphs relate to the construction, acquisition, extension, and abandonment of a railroad. They deal primarily with rights sought to be exercised by the carrier. Compare Railroad Commission v. ”

“ Railroad men object to further regulation till the effectiveness of the present laws has been thoroughly tested. In answer to the question what he would do to stop discrimination, President Tuttle of the Boston and Maine Railroad said to me this morning: “Enforce existing laws. The Interstate Commission can investigate the railroads. It need not wait for complaints. It can act on its own initiative. It can have experts examine the railroad books. It can publish the facts, and publicity is a powerful corrective. ”

“ Is it not possible to create a board that shall have the thorough knowledge of first-class railway experts, together with the high motives and unmixed interests of an honorable public commission or court, and so remove the chief causes that have worked injustice in the past?
It is possible that there may be another fair solution,—that the rates may be made neither by the railroads themselves nor by a body representing the public alone. ”

“ They have always at hand the weapon of practically interminable litigation, and it is very doubtful whether the railroad representatives in the United States Senate will permit any law to pass until it is amended so that the review in the courts shall go to the merits of the Commission’s order in each case. Powerful interests are opposed to any provision that will permit the fixing of a rate, even a maximum, to go into effect before it is connected already with the Federal courts. ”

“ It is the duty of the Commission to protect the people from excessive passenger or freight rates on the various railroads operating in the State, and to prevent unjust discrimination. The Commissioners have the power to examine the books of any railroad company, to examine its officers and agents as to their methods of conducting the business of the road, and to examine the road to see that it is not in an unsafe and dangerous condition, and when any part is found to be unsafe, to require the company to put it in such condition as will render travel safe and expeditious. ”

“ It is not enough that the railroad's motor operations are found by the Commission to be of a different character from over-the-road motor operations because they are integrated with railroad operation. The Commission must also consider the disadvantage to the public of a serious impairment of the non-rail motor carriers. Those affected are entitled to fully develop the bearing of the proposals on the transportation agencies which are involved. ”

“ The claim now made for the commission is that the only body which has the power to relieve railroad companies from the operation of the long and short haul clause on account of the existence of competition, or any other similar element which would make its application unfair, is the commission itself, which is bound to consider the question, upon application by the railroad company, but whose decision is discretionary and unreviewable. ”

“ It appears that the Commission has ignored commands of Congress and of this Court. The large railroads have succeeded in this case in doing a great injury to a barge line and to a small railroad which dared willingly to cooperate with another mode of transport, as the law required it to do, in order to profit from the inherent advantages of each and thereby benefit the public. ”

“ The general obligations incorporated into that act in respect to reasonableness of rates, prohibitions of discrimination, undue preferences, etc., are all in the Nebraska statute. A commission, called 'a board of transportation,' is also provided for (section 11) , and is charged with the general duty of enforcing the act and supervising the railroad companies in the state. ”

“ There is every reason for believing that a commission vested with the right to fix local rates, to require full and complete reports from railroad companies, and to make proper regulations for their control, aided by penal legislation to compel compliance with their orders, will be a sufficient aid to the State in exercising such control over the companies operating lines within its borders as its dignity and the welfare of its people demand. ”

“ The railroad has been recognized by Congress, and is the recipient of large land grants, and the carrying of the mails is a most important function of such a road. We think that the railroad company has fully performed its duty towards the town in the way of furnishing it proper and adequate and reasonable accommodation, without stopping these interstate trains as ordered, and, therefore, the order of the commission was improper and illegal, and not merely an incidental interference with the interstate commerce of the company. ”

“ Are they not a 'method and manner of presenting, marking, packing, and delivering property for transportation,' to use the language of § 1, as amended?
It is difficult to particularize all that the ruling of the Commission implies of power. What of omission or commission in the carrier's relation to the public may not be said to be a practice or practices in the broad sense attempted to be given to those words? A railroad's powers are its duties, bearing, of course, obligations ”

“ To create another tribunal for the purpose of controlling the railroads, is simply the building of another house upon sand.
The only solution of the Railroad Problem is national ownership, which takes away the motive to do wrong.
In no other way can you cure the disease.
Instead of establishing another Court, or Commission, for the corporations to play with, assert the principle of Eminent Domain, assess the railroads at a fair valuation, pay for them partly in treasury notes and partly in twenty-year two per cent. ”

“ Finally, in answer to urgent requests from the commission, by a letter of November 13 and telegram of November 14, the Coast Line informed the corporation commission that it regretted it could make no change in its schedule of train No. 39 because the Pennsylvania railroad had definitely expressed its inability to make any change in the hour of departure of the train from New York, as to do so would be incompatible with the duties which the Pennsylvania railroad owed to the public, to other roads, and to its contracts concerning the transportation of the mail and express matter. ”

“ It is true, as the Court points out, that this legislation reflects concern with 'the worsening railroad situation.' Ante, at 101, n. 6. But it is far from accurate to conclude that Congress was oblivious of the needs of the passenger public and of the primary responsibility of state commissions for the regulation of purely intrastate service. Under § 13a (2) a railroad seeking to discontinue an intrastate passenger train, as distinguished from an interstate operation, must first apply to the appropriate state commission. ”

“ Although this decision was prior to the passage of the Transportation Act of 1940, that Act in no way altered the basic policy [14] underlying the 1920 enactment. We recognized in St. Joe Paper Co. v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., 347 U.S. 298, 319, 74 S.Ct. 574, 586, 98 L.Ed. 710 (1954) , that Congress adopted the recommendations of the Committee of Six when it passed the 1940 Transportation Act and relieved the Commission of its duty to promulgate a national railroad consolidation plan. ”

“ Thus, in essence, the public had obtained the reform which it had been demanding for years. The reorganized commission did not hesitate to exercise its new powers. It soon began actually fixing rates, and from being a half-alive despised institution it rapidly developed into one of the most powerful agencies of administration. In the succeeding ten years its powers were still further enlarged by acts of Congress and the privilege of fixing charges practically passed out of the hands of the railroads into the control of the Interstate Commerce Commission. ”