plaints entertained. This admirably result indicates the high degree of perfection to which the railroad system of this country has attained. It is also creditable to the Act to Regulate Commerce and to its administration.

In an argument which I had the honor to make before the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce on April 3, 1894, I was able to present the following statement :

"In the exercise of its function of preventing unjust discriminations and exorbitant charges the work of the Interstate Commerce Commission has been crowned with abundant success. Although several hundred complaints as to alleged violations of the Act to Regulate Commerce were made during the year ending December 1, 1893, only 16 cases came to a formal consideration and hearing, all the rest having been settled by the mediatorial offices of the commission. In only one of the cases decided was the reasonableness of rates called in question, and in that single instance the claim was decided to be not well founded. One of the commissioners has informed me that only about two-thirds of the cases decided sustain the charges preferred. This indicates that the actual number of proven cases of unjust discrimination did not exceed II, and constitutes a most gratifying proof of the success of this nonjudicial tribunal in the exercise of its appointed function. Mr. Chairman, I venture the assertion that no court in this country inferior to the Supreme Court of the United States has had so few cases appealed from its decision in a single year."

All this proves beyond question that unjust discriminations and preferences of all sorts have been reduced to a minimum, and that they furnish no reason whatever in justification of the appeal of the commission for more power. This the commission practically concedes. Accordingly, it has abandoned unjust discriminations in rates. as a basis for its demand for autocratic powers, and now bases such claims almost, if not exclusively, upon rate cutting.

Compliance With the Acts Relative to Safety Appli

ances.

In this connection it is of interest to note that in its fifteenth annual report just issued the commission states that "the railroads now need no compulsion to induce them to use automatic couplers." It also states that both the automatic coupler and the continuous power brake are now regarded by the companies as absolute necessities in the operation of their roads.

Thus with respect to the three essential features of regution—the reasonableness of rates, non-discrimination in rates, and compliance with the laws relating to the safety of transportation—the acts regulative of commerce are complied with to a degree beyond which it is unreasonable to expect observance in the conduct of human affairs. And yet in its fifteenth annual report just issued the commission repeats the oft repeated assertion that its "efforts at regulation are feeble and disappointing," a statement which is absolutely refuted by the recorded and clearly admitted facts in its own experience.

A Baseless Prediction.

Apparently appreciating the fact that it has no substantial grounds upon which to base its claims to autocratic power, in its thirteenth annual report, submitted January 15, 1900, the commission indulged in the following speculative statement: "Nine-tenths of the people do know that any railroad company can charge for its services whatever it pleases and as much as it pleases." In reply I would observe that all the people of this country do know or can readily inform themselves that this statement has no foundation whatever in fact. Rates and the decline in rates have been and are to-day dictated by commercial and economic forces as strong and even more compulsory than any statute which could be enacted upon the subject by the Congress of the United States. The commission seems

to have been forced to a realization of this truth and in consequence has been compelled to have recourse to another excuse for its persistent appeal for what would constitute autocratic power over the industry and the internal commerce of this country. This statement is easily susceptible of verification by a congressional committee.

SECRET V IOLATIONS OF PUBLISHING RATES.

Having been forced to abandon all other reasons for its persistent claim to autocratic power, the commission has had recourse to secret rate-cutting as the gravamen of its complaint. Here again facts are against the commission. (1.) It has steadfastly denied that it is in any especial manner responsible for the prevention of rate-cutting. (2.) It has opposed any amendment to the Act to Regulate Commerce designed to afford to the commission greater facility for the enforcement of the penal provisions of the statute. (3.) It has been derelict in the discharge of its duties with respect to the prevention of rate-cutting. (4.) The remedy proposed by the commission is not applicable to the cure of the evil complained of, and (5.) The remedy proposed by the commission is misdirected. These points will be considered in the order stated.

The Commission has Strenuously Maintained that it is not Responsible for the Prevention of Rate-Cutting.

By the second section of the Act to Regulate Commerce every departure from tariff rates is expressly forbidden and is declared to be illegal. By section 6, it is provided that in order to compel every common carrier to publish and file with the commission its tariff rates, fares and charges the "writ of mandamus shall issue in the name of the people of the United States at the relation of the commissioners," and section 12 provides that "the commission is hereby authorized and required to execute and enforce··

the provisions of this act"; for which purpose the commission is given the widest possible powers of investigation, including the power to require by subpoena the attendance and testimony of witnesses and the production of all books, papers, contracts and agreements and documents relating to any matter under investigation. The law distinctly provides that it may by one or more of its members prosecute any inquiry necessary to the discharge of its duties in any part of the United States. It has also the power to require every district attorney in the United States to prosecute all necessary proceedings for the punishment of violations of the act, and its findings in all judicial proceedings are made prima facie evidence as to each and every fact found.

Furthermore, it is provided by section 16 of the Act to Regulate Commerce that if it is made to appear to any United States Court "that the lawful order or requirement of said commission drawn in question has been violated or disobeyed it shall be lawful for such court to issue a writ of injunction or other proper process, mandatory or otherwise, to restrain such common carrier from further con tinuing such violation or disobedience of such order or requirement of said commission and enjoining obedience to the same."

Notwithstanding these clearly prescribed powers and duties the commission has, from the beginning, sought to repel the idea that by the Act to Regulate Commerce it is especially charged with the duty of enforcing the provivisions of the act against secret rate-cutting-the paramount purpose of the act. In proof of the correctness of this assertion the following facts of record are adduced :

In its annual report to Congress for the year 1893, at page 7, the commission declared that it "is wholly without authority as respects those discriminations between individuals which are made misdemeanors by that enactment," that "it is endowed with none of the functions per

taining to the detection and punishment of delinquents except such functions as may be exercised by private citizens," and (on page 8) it deprecated the idea that it has anything to do with "uncovering the guilty transaction and bringing to justice those who engage in it."

In a letter addressed to Hon. Wm. E. Chandler, a Senator of the United States from New Hampshire, under date of October 17, 1895, Hon. Martin A. Knapp, then an Inter state Commerce Commissioner and now Chairman of the Commission, strenuously maintained that the prevention of the crime of rate-cutting is a thing "with which the commission has no power to deal." (Senate Document 39, 54th Congress 1st Session, page 14.)

For this and other declarations of similar import Senator Chandler administered to Mr. Knapp and to the commission a sharp rebuke.

Mr. Knapp appears to have been then, as he has been ever since, laboring under the delusion that the duty of preventing rate-cutting and other penal offenses denounced by the Act to Regulate Commerce is incompatible with and beneath the function of revising all the freight tariff of the country, of prescribing rates for the future, and of determining the relative advantages to be enjoyed by competing towns, cities and sections, and by competing industries throughout this vast country, a conception which he described in his letter to Senator Chandler as "my high ideal of the work in which the commission is engaged," an idea which as I have endeavored to show is expressive of a malignant form of bureaucratic government, and as such utterly inconsistent with the governmental institutions of this country.

In its persistent denial of the fact that it is explicitly charged by the Act to Regulate Commerce with the duty of preventing rate-cutting the commission flatly opposes its