%5A THE REGULATION INTERSTATE RAILWAYS By H. T. NEWCOMB Of the Bar of the District of Columbia Author of “ Railway Economics,” “The Work of the Interstate Commerce Commission,” etc. 4 Reprinted, by permission, from the Bulletin of the Commercial Law League of America for February, 1905 ! 9°5 CONTENTS. Page The Law Against Rebates .... 5 Successful Operation of Elkins Law 7 Importance of Clear Thinking 8 What the Townsend-Esch Bill Would Do 8 It Confers General Rate-making Power 9 It Confers Legislative Power iq . It Concentrates a Power now Widely Diffused . . . .12 It Would Stop Voluntary Reductions 13 Provides an Inelastic System 15 The Political Dangers 15 It Would Increase Rebating 16 Jit Gives Power to Increase Rates 17 It Would Provoke Litigation . 19 Who Own the Railways 20 “Impracticable,” said Judge Cooley ? 22 THE Regulation of Interstate Railways" By H. T. NEWCOMB, Of the Bar of the District of Columbia. The impetus recently given by President Roosevelt to public discussion of the legislative regulation of interstate railways makes it worth while to state precisely the nature and purpose of the proposals now under consideration by the Congress. The paragraph relating to this topic in the President’s annual message was entitled “Rebates,” but there is nothing in what followed to warrant that title and no measure dealing with the payment of rebates is now receiving congressional consideration. A rebate, using the word in its broadest sense, is any device by which one shipper of freight is permitted to receive service for a smaller pay- ment than is exacted from some other shipper for a like and contemporaneous service. THE LAW AGAINST REBATES. All devices of this sort are absolutely prohibited by Federal law and have been so prohibited for nearly eighteen years. The language of the statute is broad enough to cover any conceivable device, whether by underbilling, underweighing, false classification, excessive payments for the use of shippers’ ♦Reprinted from the Bulletin of the Commercial Law League of America for February, 1905. 5 6 ♦ cars, unreasonable allowances to terminal railways or other- wise. The law on this subject was materially strengthened by the Elkins act, approved on February 19, 1903, which reads, in part, as follows : . . and it shall be unlawful for any person, persons, or corporation to offer, grant, or give or to solicit, accept, or receive any rebate, concession, or discrimination in respect of the transportation of any property in interstate or foreign commerce by any common carrier subject to said act to regu- late commerce and the acts amendatory thereto, whereby any such property shall by any device whatever be transported at a less rate than that named in the tariffs published and filed by such carrier, as is required by said act to regulate com- merce and the acts amendatory thereto, or whereby any other advantage is given or discrimination is practiced.” Violation of the foregoing is a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine, which may not be less than $1,000 nor more than $20,000. In addition to these penalties, the statute places in the hands of the Interstate Commerce Commission a most powerful instrument for the enforcement of the laws by pro- viding : “That whenever the Interstate Commerce Commission shall have reasonable ground for belief that any common carrier is engaged in the carriage of passengers or freight traffic between given points at less than the published rates on file, or is committing any discriminations forbidden by law, a petition may be presented alleging such facts to the Circuit Court of the United States, sitting in equity, having jurisdiction; . . . whereupon it shall be the duty of the court summarily to inquire into the circumstances upon such notice, and in such manner as the court shall direct, and with- out the formal pleadings and proceedings applicable to ordi- nary suits in equity, . . . and upon being satisfied of the truth of the allegations of said petition, said court shall enforce an observance of the published tariffs or direct and require a discontinuance of such discrimination by proper orders, writs and process. . . SUCCESSFUL OPERATION OF ELKINS LAW. Thus “government by injunction” has been invoked in aid of the suppresion of rebates. In his annual message to Congress of a year ago (transmitted on December 7, 1903), the President declared, concerning this legislation: “The Congress . . . has secured equal treatment to all producers in the transportation of their goods, thus taking a long stride forward in making effective the work of the Inter- state Commerce Commission.” The testimony of the Interstate Commerce Commission, as given in the annual report which it submitted to Congress on December 17, 1904, is that — “As to that branch of regulation which deals with the publication and invariable application of tariff rates, the act, as amended by the Elkins law of February 19, 1903, appears to be operating successfully as applied to carriers subject to its provisions. . . Mr. E. P. Bacon, who is the chief legislative agent of those who wish to confer rate-making authority upon the Commis- sion on December 9, 1904, while addressing the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce of the House of Repre- sentatives, was asked whether he had “heard of any proceed- ings against the railroads in the matter of rebates.” He replied as follows: “I have not heard of any occasion for proceedings. *It has been so generally observed by the railways since its passage that there has been no occasion for prosecution.” During the same hearing and also with reference to the Elkins act, Mr. Bacon said: “That . . . has been productive of immense good. It has been surprising, in fact, to me to what an extent that bill has been complied with by the transportation companies, and in fact our committee has been unable to trace any viola- tion of that bill of any consequence. There have been some devices for defeating it by the establishment of side tracks, Meaning the Elkins law of February 19 1903 8 ♦ which are called railroads, so that on a division with the railroads they get an undue proportion , and by that means obtaining personal discriminations, personal favors, and per- sonal advantages. But the Commission, after hearing some cases in that direction, have already taken steps to prevent that evasion of the law.” By whatever device accomplished, a rebate is vicious in principle and demoralizing in practice. It is fortunate that it offends the American spirit of fairness ; that it is so wholly obnoxious to the people that its condemnation is as certain and as general as it deserves. Rebates from interstate freight charges have been illegal for but eighteen years, and the laws against them have been strengthened from time to time as opportunities for their perfection have been indicated by experience. If they are not as effective as the laws against burglary and arson, the fact may be set down as, principally, evidence of the slow growth of higher moral ideals amidst the struggles of the market place. Further strengthening of these laws should be welcomed and will be welcomed whenever it is clear that the changes suggested are likely to produce the results desired. IMPORTANCE OF CLEAR THINKING. It would be most unfortunate, however, if the improper and inappropriate use of a term of such sinister suggestion as the word ‘ ‘ rebate ’ ’ should result in the enactment of unwise laws which could have no relation or application to the obnox- ious practice to which that term properly applies. WHAT THE TOWNSEND-ESCH BILL WOULD DO. The proposals now under consideration in Congress relate solely to the enlargement of the power of the Government over the rate schedules, and not to the prevention of the devia- tions from those schedules which are accomplished by means 9 of rebates. The President urges that the Interstate Com- merce Commission be endowed with “the power to revise rates and regulations,” or, in other words, to revise and remake the schedules of charges which the railways must observe. The Commission has described (in its annual report for 1904) the enlarged power which it seeks, as follows: ‘ ‘ What the Commission could do if the authority so defined should be definitely conferred by the Congress is this : After service of complaint upon the carrier or carriers, after full hearing of each carrier and shipper interested, and after care- ful investigation, a report and opinion would be rendered, and if the decision should be against the carrier, an order would be entered directing it to cease and desist from charging the rate complained of, and to substitute therefor a rate found, upon the evidence before the Commission, to be reasonable and just.” The only substantial criticism of the foregoing which can be made is the use of the singular form ‘ ‘ rate ’ ’ instead of the plural form “rates” in describing the changes in the schedules which the Commission wishes to have power to make. This choice of a word of minimum significance was not intended to mislead anyone and will not mislead anyone, for the Commission declares, in the sentence immediately preced- ing that just quoted, that the proposed enlargement of its powers “would confer in substance the same power that was actually exercised by the Commission from the date of its organization up to May, 1897, when the United States Supreme Court held that such power was not expressed in the statute.”' IT CONFERS GENERAL RATE-MAKING POWER. Now, it happens that in the very case decided by the Supreme Court in May, 1897, the Commission had attempted by a single order to substitute, not “a rate,” but several thousand rates, which it regarded as “reasonable and just,” for several thousand other rates which it had condemned. In fact, in this one order it attempted to compel a complete 10 revision of the charges on all through, south-bound railway- freight originating east of the Mississippi River and north of the Ohio and Potomac rivers, and destined to points south of the two last named rivers and east of the Mississippi River. The Commission regards it as “persistent misrepresentation” to allege that the power sought is that of rate-making, but if this is true the misrepresentation began with the highest court in the land. In deciding the case just referred to, the Supreme Court said : “There is nothing in the act requiring the Commission to proceed singly against each railroad company for each sup- posed or alleged violation of the act. In this very case the order of the Commission was directed against a score or more of companies and determined the maximum rates on half a dozen classes of freight from Cincinnati and Chicago, respec- tively, to several named southern ports and the territory contiguous thereto, so that if the power exists, as is claimed, there would be no escape from the conclusion that it would be within the discretion of the Commission of its own motion to suggest that the interstate rates on all the roads of the country were unjust and unreasonable, notify the several roads of such opinion, direct a hearing, and upon such a hear- ing make one general order, reaching to every road and cover- ing every rate.” (167 U. S., p. 508.) IT CONFERS LEGISLATIVE POWER. In the same case the Supreme Court defined the nature of the powers which the Commission then claimed to exercise and now seeks to obtain, as follows: “It is one thing to inquire whether the rates which have been charged and collected are reasonable — that is a judicial act; but an entirely different thing to prescribe rates which shall be charged in the future — that is a legislative act.” (Ibid., p. 499.) The power to initiate railway rates over any railway is 1 1 exhausted almost as soon as its operation is begun. There- after no power anywhere remains except that to revise, remodel, and correct the schedules originally adopted or their successors. This power, so far as interstate traffic is con- cerned, must be exercised subject to Congressional regula- tion, and this regulation may constitutionally go so far as to take the rate-making or rate-revising authority away from those who now exercise it and transfer it to Congress or to a commission. Constitutionally this legislative power is com- plete and plenary, except as it is limited by the provisions- that : — (a) “No person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty,, or property, without due process of law ” (Article V. of the Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.) And — (b) “No preference shall be given by any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one State over those of another.” (Article I., Section 9, of the Constitution of the United States.) But the fact that the Congress possesses the power of rail- way rate making, a power conferred before the locomotive was dreamed of ; when the greater portion of the present area of the United States was an uninhabited and trackless wilder- ness ; when the entire population of the country was less than four millions ; when it contained but five cities of ten thousand inhabitants and none over thirty-five thousand; is, perhaps, not evidence that it should be fully exercised in the day when even the oceans do not mark the boundaries of the nation, when forty-five thousand locomotives and 205,000 miles of track are the measure of railway development; when con- tinental America counts its population as eighty-five millions and one of its seaports contains more people than were covered by its flag when the power was established. As said by the Supreme Court in the case already quoted : “The importance of the question can not be overestimated. Billions of dollars are invested in railroad properties, millions of passengers, as well as millions of tons of freight, are moved each year by the railroad companies, and this transportation 12 is carried on by a multitude of corporations working in different parts of the country and subjected to varying and diverse conditions.” (167 U. S., p. 494.) A far less authoritative contribution to the discussion on this subject says, with truth: ‘‘The power to ‘revise rates and regulations’ is the power generally to make rates. Applied to American interstate railway services, it is greater power than has ever been exer- cised by any President or Prince, by any Congress or Parlia- ment, by any body of five men or of five thousand men. It is power to bind or to loose industry, to enrich or to impover- ish both capital and labor, to build up or to tear down com- munities and commerce.” IT CONCENTRATES A POWER NOW WIDELY DIFFUSED. This tremendous power is now neither held nor exercised by any railway officer nor by all of the railway officers of the country together. Although nominally resting with them, it is really shared with those who ship commodities and, finally, with the consumers of the articles transported. No check is more real or more effective than that imposed upon railway officers by commercial competition. Traffic and namings grow with fairness, not with unfairness. No rail- way ever prospered while serving unprosperous communities. Producers will not produce and consumers will not consume at localities which are subjected to unjust prejudice and dis- advantage by the adjustment of railway rates. The present body of railway rates has grown up out of these conditions and subject to these checks. American industry is intensely dynamic and the changes are rapid and far-reaching. Day by day these changes require changes in rates, and so long as progress continues the charges must be altered and read- justed Thousands of railway officers hold daily conferences with tens of thousands of shippers for the purpose of agreeing i3 upon reductions of rates. From April 5, 1887, to the date of its latest (1904) annual report, the Interstate Commerce Commission received 2,358,960 rate schedules, and the present annual average is about one hundred thousand. Nearly all of these schedules are issued in order to report reductions. The writer last quoted was perfectly accurate in saying, in regard to the rate-making power : “Given to the Interstate Commerce Commission, it will not have been transferred from the railways, for neither singly nor collectively can they or do they now exercise it; it will have been taken from the public, travelers, shippers, and railways among whom it is now diffused, and concentrated in the hands of a government which by that act of concentra- tion will be made the most powerful and the most centralized of all governments on earth, from the earliest dawn of history to the present day.” IT WOULD STOP VOLUNTARY REDUCTIONS. The purchasers of transportation fare better with open-minded railway officers than they would with a rate -making Commission. Thousands of railway officers are to-day looking for oppor- tunities to make profitable reductions in rates. They con- duct this search not as philanthropists, but because the first lesson they have learned as traffic officers and the most impor- tant principle on which they act is that, under certain con- ditions, lower rates mean more business and an increase in revenue which exceeds the increased cost that the new busi- ness entails. They know that progress in this direction is a geometrical progression, that is, that more paying traffic secured by lowered rates means more prosperous customers; that more prosperous customers mean new items of traffic and enlarged movement of the old items, and that these augmentations will warrant other reductions in charges which will cause a repetition of the process. Under normal con- ditions and eliminating the items of traffic whose volume is 14 not elastic, there will be no cessation in the downward trend of rates until every customer is satisfied. But create a rate- making Commission and everything is changed. The traffic officer who formerly sought for opportunities to reduce his rates is no longer open-minded ; he has been transformed into an advocate of the existing schedule and every item in it. He knows that a voluntary reduction will be used as a club to compel an involuntary one. Therefore, his answer to the shipper who seeks a reduced rate is very likely to be that it is the business of the Interstate Commerce Commission to make reductions. And no commission of five men or of fifty men can order reductions, after investigations bearing the slightest resemblance to judicial procedure, with one-tenth of the rapidity with which they are now voluntarily made. This retardation of the natural decline in rates has happened wherever official rate-making has been enforced by State Legislatures. The Atlanta Journal recently made the follow- ing statement concerning conditions in Georgia, which has long had a rate-making Commission : “ ... when a merchant approaches the railroad for rates in Georgia he is met with the reply that the railroad commission regulates that, and he can get no reduction. If, however, they are asked for rates to towns outside of Georgia, the application receives immediate and favorable considera- tion, and the best rates are granted, because the point of destination is beyond the limits of the State, and, therefore, not controlled by the State Commission. . . . • As mat- ters now stand the plain logic of the situation is that within the State of Georgia, rates being regulated by the railroad commission, shippers are powerless to receive fair treatment from the railroads, while to points just beyond the limits of the State they can receive the most favorable rates, and shippers from these points into the Sta^e receive the lowest rates that can be obtained — much lower, as a rule, than the Georgia shipper can get.” i5 PROVIDES AN INELASTIC SYSTEM. Official rate-making would subject American industry to arbitrary and inelastic conditions, under which progress would be checked. A serious vice of legislative interference with the business relations among the participants in industry is that the insight of the legislature, or its agents, in business matters can not be as keen as that of those directly concerned in them, nor is the impulse to secure accurate and complete knowledge equal to that due to the rigid responsibility for commercial success or failure imposed by the competitive conditions of private business. The physical limitation is perhaps even greater. No Federal commission has or will ever have the multitudinous agencies for studying the needs of industry or the close touch with business life which railway traffic officers now enjoy. If all other elements were supplied, as they never can be, no Congress would ever accord the funds necessary to employ a force adequate in mere numerical strength. Rate- making is essentially empirical. The ultimate test of each rate is the degree of prosperity of the producer, the carrier, and the consumer. However thoroughly conditions are studied before a new rate is made, the results of its enforce- ment must be gathered promptly and in detail, and some one must be ready with the necessary power immediately to m^ke a second change if the first is shown by experience to have been unfortunate. No commission can exercise these functions, nor can any commission ever respond with the needed rapidity to the daily changing conditions of interstate commerce. The pending proposals would stretch American industry upon a Procrustean bed and result in nothing but numbness, stag- nation, and deformity. THE POLITICAL DANGERS. Government rate-making would introduce political considera- tions in matters which are wholly industrial. i6 There is no industrial community in the United States which does not compete with some other community, and none which would not like to have its rates reduced or those of its competitors advanced. Boston complains because its rates on similar traffic are higher than those of New York; New York complains that it pays more than Philadelphia; Philadelphia, that it pays more than Baltimore ; all four would like to have the rates to New Orleans and Galveston greatly advanced. Only the other day a New England Senator, high in the councils of the President, announced that the pur- pose of the proposed legislation is the abolition of the differ- entials under the standard rates which permit the Southern Atlantic ports to do any competitive business at all. This would be very satisfactory to Boston, but carry the news to Norfolk, Newport News, Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, Brunswick, and Pensacola, and it would be received quite differently. Yet the Commission is composed of the political appointees of a partisan President, and, unfortunately, there must for a long time to come be something of sectionalism in American politics. Is it not possible, even probable, that, in spite of the most impartial purposes, some favor will be shown to the localities that are in political accord with the admini- stration or party in power? Certainly the likelihood of such unintentional bias is not lessened by the fact that the mem- bers of the Commission are appointed for limited terms, are almost certain to desire reappointment, and may be ambitious for further political advancement. IT WOULD INCREASE REBATING. There would he more rehating under official rate -making than under the existing system. The power of the Federal Government and most drastic laws have not been sufficient, up to the present time, wholly to eliminate secret deviations from schedules promulgated by the railways. Is it likely to be easier to enforce schedules made by an extraneous authority? In this connection it is important to note that the power sought is to raise as well as to lower rates. The Commission has announced that many rates are too low (Annual Report for 1897, p. 22), and it follows that some ought to be advanced if others are lowered. In fact, this is an essential corollary to the well-known fact that railway property as a whole produces a very low return upon the investment. In urging, in 1897, that it be given rate-making power, the Commission explained at length its desire to be empowered to order advances in rates, saying: “There is, moreover, one class of discriminations which we have never possessed the power to effectually correct, even while we assumed the right to fix the maximum rate. The most bitterly contested cases now pending before us are of exactly that character. . . . What is necessary here is the right to fix a minimum rate, to say that the carriers shall not charge below a certain rate. ... It may well be inquired whether a carrier should be prohibited from mak- ing as low a rate as it chooses. . . . The very reason why we suggest that the Commission be given this power to fix a minimum rate in certain cases is to preserve the rights of the public by preventing an act of unjust discrimination.” (Annual Report for 1897, pp. 24-25.) IT GIVES POWER TO INCREASE RATES. There is scarcely any complaint that railway rates are excessive per se , and no well-founded complaint of that char- acter. No allegation of absolute unreasonableness in charges has ever yet survived the test of judicial scrutiny; the Com- mission has never declared a rate to be excessive in and of itself except after comparing it with other rates or the revenue derived from it with other earnings. The relations among rates furnish the real element of controversy. *Thus adjust- * "As frequently held by the Commission, application of the terms reasonable’ and ‘unreasonable’ necessarily involves comparison/’ (Annual Report for 1898, p. 27.) i8 ments may be found to be unreasonable, but rates, as such, can not be shown to be in that condition. But if only the difference between one rate and another is in controversy it can be just as effectively modified by raising one of them as by lowering the other. No one contends, for example, that a rate of twenty cents per one hundred pounds on grain shipped from Chicago to New York is unreasonable, but it is now contended by New York interests that a difference of three cents in favor of Baltimore is excessive. If the Com- mission, having obtained the power now sought, should sus- tain this contention and order the carriers to cease and desist from enforcing a differential of more than one cent, its order could be obeyed by reducing the New York rate from twenty to eighteen cents or by raising the Baltimore rate from seven- teen to nineteen. If the companies interested chose the latter method, what agency could compel them instead to lower the just and reasonable rate to New York? Indeed, in such a situation, where one rate is reasonable in itself, but the adjust- ment as compared with some other rate is unfair, it is obvious that the other must be too low and that the only proper remedy, the only one which would be sustained on appeal to the courts, must be an advance of the lower rate. The Commission has, in its reports, indicated many cases in which it would have exercised this power to prescribe minimum rates. In one case (Annual Report for 1897, pp. 24-25) the power would have been used to require an advance, or perhaps to prevent a reduction, in the rates on lumber from Winona, Minn., to Kansas City, Omaha, and contiguous territory. Again, in 1898, the Commission enumerated (Annual Report for 1898, pp. 23-24) three cases of great importance which it thought served as illustrations of its con- tention that the fact that it can not prescribe minimum rates constitutes a “serious defect in the statute.” The desire to interfere in this way with relations which have resulted from a long process of industrial and commer- cial evolution shows how far even the present fairly conserva- tive Commission might attempt to go in the arbitrary i9 disturbance of basic business conditions. What some future Commission might do may well be left to the imagination. Rebating is bad enough, but under conceivable circumstances it might save the country from the worse evil of an inflexible and unwise adjustment of rates. No industrial community will ever fall behind its competitors and no great business will ever become bankrupt because of final refusal to violate un- wise laws, but unwise laws may drive out of business the men who hold to the highest standards of morality and put in their places others who will do whatever is essential to success. When England’s Parliament attempted to deprive wage earners of the increased wages which the economic conditions brought about by the decimation of the ranks of labor by the Black Death justified, the law failed and those who paid wages fixed by the market rather than by statute were not restrained by the argument that any violation of law is immoral. No Parliament or Congress has ever yet enacted a law that has effectually repealed a natural law of commerce and trade. Labor, merchandise, and transportation will forever sell for what they will bring. IT WOULD PROVOKE LITIGATION. The enactment of any of the pending proposals would provoke endless litigation. The foregoing discussion will have indicated to any law- yer multitudinous lines of legal controversy over any order the Commission might make. How far the provision against the taking of property without due process of law may be effective to prevent unreasonable reductions of particular rates is only one of the constitutional questions which would require extended judicial inquiry. So far the popular theory has been based upon an expression by Judge Brewer in the Iowa railroad case (Chicago and North-Western v. Peter A. Dey et al., 35 Fed. Rep., 866), decided in the United States 20 Circuit Court for the Southern District of Iowa, on July 27, 1888. Judge Brewer said: “Coming now to the question of the schedule as presented, I remark that the schedule as a whole must control, and its validity or invalidity does not depend upon the sufficiency or insufficiency of the rates for any few particular subjects of transportation.” It is to be remarked that in this case an injunction against the proposed legislative schedule was granted, and that the objection before the court was to an entire schedule rather than to particular items in it. It is, possibly, unwarranted to assume that if the legislative attempt were to take up the schedule in detail, and to substitute unremunerative rates for remunerative rates, some way to stop the process, by judicial action, somewhere short of the confiscation point, would not be discovered. And it is here to be remarked that the decisions indicate that the confiscation point is that of “no compensation,” not that of unreasonably low compensa- tion. Then, too, every great city is now a port of the United States. It would be scarcely possible to issue an order which could not be the subject of litigation on this score if the pro- vision against preference does not, in fact, tie the hands of Congress on the whole subject of effective rate-making. All this in addition to the interpretation by the courts of a new statute which attempts much hitherto unattempted. WHO OWN THE RAILWAYS. Anti-railway legislation is an attack upon the industries and savings of the people. On June 30, 1903, the railways of the United States em- ployed 1,3 12, 537 men, and during the preceding twelve months they paid out in wages and salaries $757,321,415. Industries conducted to supply the needs of the railways and those of railway employees, such as car-building, iron and coal mining, steel making, raising and manufacturing food, 21 etc., for employees, undoubtedly employed other millions of Americans. All these are dependent upon railway prosperity for their own prosperity. Railway ownership is so diffused that an attack on the owners of such property is an attack on an important pro- portion of the whole population. Forty-three railways, with a total length of 115,641 miles, had on June 30, 1902, 225,037 registered stockholders (see article entitled “Who Own the Railways,” by Mr. Slasson Thompson, in “The World of To-Day” for January, 1904). On September 29, 1903, the Illinois Central Railroad had 9,123 stockholders, of whom 7,174 held fewer than one hundred shares each, while only 239 held over five hundred shares each. The life insurance companies authorized to do business in Massachu- setts own railway securities worth $668,262,896, and have loaned on others worth $48,381,283. No less than 18,147,- 382 policy holders are interested in the stability of these invest- ments. Fire insurance companies doing business in the same State own $113,702,893 more of railway securities, and hold as collateral others worth $1,749,752. Adding the holdings of accident and guarantee companies, the aggregate interest of the various policy holders of these companies in railway securities is found to be $845,889,038. In the State of New York 2,365,583 savings bank depositors are the real owners of $177,444,223 of railway securities; 1,723,015 depositors in Massachusetts own $113,397,287; 474,548 in Connecticut own $82,265,024; 209,011 in Maine own $25,166,853; 242,605 in New Jersey own $20,334,178, and 159,956 in New Hampshire own $23,746,521. Thus the savings bank holdings of rail- way securities in these six States aggregate $442,354,086, and represent 5,174,718 depositors. Who can say how many families would be deprived of their savings, how many women and children would be impoverished, by the destruction of these values? There can be no attack upon property which is so widely distributed without bringing general disaster which will extend to apparently unrelated industries. 22 “ IMPRACTICABLE,” SAID JUDGE COOLEY. “Changes in government,” said Hon. Thomas M. Cooley, a former chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission and one of the greatest of American jurists, “are to be feared unless the benefit is certain.” There is no difficulty in deter- mining what Judge Cooley would think of the present pro- posals. While chairman of the Commission, he discussed officially the suggestion that that body should “act as rate- makers for all the roads,” saying: “This in any considerable state would be an enormous task. In a country so large as ours, and with so vast a mile- age of roads, it would be superhuman. A construction of the statute which would require its performance would render the due administration of the law altogether impracticable.”