PREFACE. The first edition of this book was published in May, 1905, and a supplement thereto in August, 1906, after the adoption of the amendments of that year to the Interstate Commerce Act. To such an extent has the law of Interstate Commerce and its federal regulation been developed and expanded during the intervening years, not only through judicial construction, but through far-reaching statutory changes, that a new edition is now required not only because much must be added, but also for the further reason that much of what was then declared to be the law must of necessity be rewritten. It was said in the preface to the first edition that it was the purpose of the book to present in a compact form the law of interstate commerce as declared by the court since the adoption of the constitution, and also as enacted by Congress and applied by the Interstate Commerce Commission in the direct exercise of the power of federal regulation, and that the book was written under the conviction that the direct federal regulation of interstate commerce had come to stay. It was also said that the rules declared by the Interstate Commerce Commission in what were then the eighteen years of its existence, though its powers had been in some respects curtailed by the judicial construction of the Interstate Commerce Act, were body of administrative railroad law which was properly included in such a treatise, as every phase of the complex adjustment of railway rates had been considered by the Commission, and its rulings in this infinite variety of cases had a permanent value in the solution of the transportation problems of the future. At the present time it must be said that the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission have been greatly enhanced, not only by legislation, but also by judicial construction. It now exercises powers, not only of investigation and administration, but also those that are essentially |