Railroad regulation

“ England with her rigid control has not been able to stamp out railroad abuses, and the lesson of English railroad regulation is that the subjecting of private 265railways to a public control strong enough to accomplish any substantial elimination of discrimination and extortion takes the life out of private railway enterprise along with its evils. ”

“ This is a practical world, however, and the practical facts are that the difficulties in the way of public ownership of railways in this country at present are very great, and that much good may be accomplished by judicious regulation. The long and short haul clause may be made effective; the railroads can be prevented from paying shippers more for cars or switches than they would pay each other; private car-lines, express companies, and water carriers can be brought within the Commerce Act ”

“ Secondly, the railroads themselves had been very active in securing a change of the personnel of the Committee on Interstate Commerce, and men had been elected to the Senate and placed on that committee whose sympathies were in favor of very conservative regulation, if any regulation at all. The railroads had firmly determined to stop any further railroad regulation. And finally, in the make-up of the Committee, a majority of the Senators placed on the Committee on Interstate Commerce were men whose sympathies were with the railroads. ”

“ The minority, made up of the out and out machine Republicans and Democrats, who were prepared to pass a measure which under the name railroad regulation would leave the railroads practically independent of effective State supervision. ”

“ One other general power that has been given to State commissions in the legislation since 1900 is the authority to compel railroads to furnish proper facilities, together with power of supervision of management in other respects, which is adopted in the Federal legislation of 1906 in an experimental way. Those who would understand the Federal legislation in its latest form should study the most recent railroad regulation in Minnesota and Wisconsin, Indiana and New York. ”

“ Probably no law in the United States has ever before been so fiercely attacked at all of its vital points as has this law. It is not strange that among the great number of National and State courts the railroad companies have found occasionally a judge ready and willing to assist them in breaking it down, but upon the whole the judiciary has been disposed to co-operate with other departments of the Government in their efforts to secure effective regulation of the transportation business. ”

“ The legislation recently enacted by Congress for the regulation of commerce by railway is the result of more careful and intelligent deliberation perhaps than any other measure of similar character, and it is not unlikely that the legislation of many of the States will sooner or later be conformed to it. ”

“ All had the effect of throwing light upon the operations of the roads and creating a public sentiment in favor of reforms which railroad managers found it difficult to disregard wholly.
The failure of the State commissions to provide an adequate regulation of railways was due not so much to their methods as to their geographical limitations. The consolidation of roads and mutual agreements for through freight took a large part of the traffic out of the jurisdiction of the State commissions. Hence, a general demand arose for regulation by the Federal Government. ”

“ It is doubtful whether there is at present any interest in the commercial world which has a greater tendency to monopoly and combination than the railroad interest. There are in the United States some 40,000 railroad stations. Not more than 4,000 of these are junctions of two or more roads. At 90 per cent. of these stations shippers are therefore confined to one line of railroad, and are, in absence of State regulation, compelled to pay for transportation whatever price the companies may be disposed to charge, subject only to such restrictions as the proximity of competing points may impose. ”

“ The balance is built and operated on private right of way, and goes around, rather than through, the cities. The tracks are standard gauge and of standard railroad construction, were, at the time they were laid, of higher class than those of the Southern Railway Company in the same territory, were intended for handling substantial interchange freight traffic in connection with steam railroads, have the same ruling grades as the latter in the same territory, and are of 80-pound rail. ”

“ Justice Hughes, later Chief Justice, referred to 'the settled principle that, in the absence of legislation by Congress, the states are not denied the exercise of that power to secure safety in the physical operation of railroad trains within their territory, even though such trains are used in interstate commerce. That has been the law since the beginning of railroad transportation.' Atlantic Coast Line R. Co. ”

“ Senate committee on this bill. The report shows why the proposed measure was both an unjust and an impracticable one. It should be apparent to every one that railways never can be operated in this way. The confusion and disorder would be endless; besides, every railroad which is undertaken and constructed as an actual business enterprise is entitled to make fair earnings. ”

“ Railroads are not like stages or steamboats, which, if furnishing no profit at one place, and under one prescribed rate of transportation, can be taken elsewhere and put to use at other places and under other circumstances. The railroad must stay, and, as a permanent investment, its value to its owners may not be destroyed. ”

“ Since the adjustment of business under this law, there has been less friction between the people and the railroads than before for thirty years, and so satisfactory has it proved to all that no one, not even a railroad man, has to this day asked the legislature to repeal the law or any part of it. The act contains no new principle of railroad control. By far the greater part of its provisions were taken from the old law. Nearly every one of its features may be found either in the Interstate Commerce Act or upon the statute books of other States. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There should be additions to the Interstate Law, or a special law regulating the methods of construction companies, which are probably doing more to demoralize the railroad system—and doing it very insidiously, too—than any other factor connected with these great arteries of the country's prosperity. ”

“ The findings show that the operation of long trains, that is trains of more than fourteen passenger and more than seventy freight cars, is standard practive over the main lines of the railroads of the United States, and that, if the length of trains is to be regulated at all, national uniformity in the regulation adopted, such as only Congress can prescribe, is practically indispensable to the operation of an efficient and economical national railway system. ”

“ We were promised a complete solution of our transport troubles with the hurried passage two years ago of the Esch-Cummins Bill, now known officially as the Transportation Act. Have we reached that solution, or anything like unto a solution?
You do not have to ask the average man twice for an answer to that question. He knows. If he is a business man he knows doubly well. He knows that for the last ten years our American railroad system has been in something of a decline. A decade ago it was at the zenith of its efficiency. ”

“ Without legislative sanction no one has a right to put upon it a team of elephants or a locomotive and train of cars, or other strange motors, and thereby obstruct the public travel. These restrictions might be removed by the legislative power, and there is also no doubt that under the common law the State has the right to permit the independent use of the railroad track by any person having motive power and cars adapted to it. ”

“ No ordinary body of men can permanently resist it."
But the remedy which Mr. Hudson proposes for the correction of railroad evils is one of doubtful efficacy. It is this:
"Legislation should restore the character of public highways to the railways by securing to all persons the right to run trains over their track under proper regulations, and by defining the distinction between the proprietorship and maintenance of the railway and the business of common carriers." ”

“ In view of the future magnitude of the transportation interest the importance of placing its control and management early upon sound principles should not be under-estimated. Abuses crept into railroad management in the past, not because the men who controlled it were necessarily worse than men engaged in other pursuits, but because the States failed to provide adequate legislation for the control of this new social and commercial force, and the license enjoyed by railroad men gradually turned into serious evils what seemed at first only harmless practices. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That the meaning contended for would be in direct conflict with this rule would seem free from doubt, since the inevitable result of sustaining the contention would be to put it in the power of a railroad, by operating a train for a trifling distance over tracks within the exception, to thereby secure the right thereafter to operate such train over long distances without regard to compliance with the safeguards of the statute which otherwise would be controlling. ”

“ These evils and abuses have increased with the growth of the railroad system, and nothing short of the sovereign power can now correct them. It is incumbent upon the state not only to correct the evils of the past, but to base legislative control of railroads upon principles so wise and so broad as to endure for ages, permitting the unlimited growth of the system and at the same time insuring commercial liberty and prosperity to the generations to come. ”

“ Perhaps the most remarkable invention of modern times, in the influence which it has had, and is yet to have, on the affairs of the world, as well as in its total change of all the elements on which land transportation formerly depended, is the railroad system. It is not strange, then, that when we are called to construe a statute relating to this class of subjects, passed before a steam engine or a railroad was thought of, in its application to this modern system, we should be met by difficulties of the gravest character. ”

“ Congress has empowered the Interstate Commerce Commission to authorize a railroad, when public convenience permits, to abandon any portion of its line. But when such portion is a suburban or interurban electric railway abandonment may be authorized only if it is part of a general steam railroad system of transportation. ”

“ Every existing railway company is bound to permit new railroad lines to be connected with it, at the expense of these latter. All laws granting existing railway companies the right of injunction against the building of parallel or competition lines are hereby abolished throughout the Empire, without detriment to rights already acquired. ”

“ The most prevalent condition was that 'the said railroad shall be and remain a public highway for the use of the Government of the United States, free from toll or other charge upon the transportation of any property or troops of the United States.' This was construed to require the railroad to furnish only free use of the rails and permanent structures. ”

“ That decision rested fundamentally on the view that rail transportation has a physical unity and to such an extent that, as held very early, regulation of rail rates cannot be 'split up' between two States or left only to one State even as to transportation which begins and ends in the same State but passes through the territory of another. ”

“ We do not arrogate superior wisdom or intelligence to ourselves when we suggest to the people of the United States, and especially that portion of the country where railroads have been the subject of what we consider to be excessive legislation, that the rational mode of treating any form of human industry that has for its object the performance of desired and lawful service is to let it alone, and that the railway is no exception to this principle. ”

“ Instead of operating under the rules of common sense and according to circumstances, every railroad had to operate on the advice of counsel. Rules spread through every part of the organization. Then came the avalanche of state and federal regulations, until to-day we find the railways hog-tied in a mass of rules and regulations. With the lawyers and the financiers on the inside and various state commissions on the outside, the railway manager has little chance. That is the trouble with the railways. Business cannot be conducted by law. ”

“ The legislature of a state could not itself make such an order, and it cannot delegate the power to a commission to do so, in its discretion, when adequate facilities are otherwise furnished.
The transportation of passengers on interstate state trains as rapidly as can with safety be done is the inexorable demand of the public who use such trains. Competition between great trunk lines is fierce and at times bitter. Each line must do its best enen to obtain its fair share of the transportation between states, both of passengers and freight. ”