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and decide what these percentages have been in the past, he can make an award for the future, under which the competitive traffic of the different roads may be fairly divided. The arrangements for doing this are various. Sometimes the roads carry such traffic as may happen to be offered, and settle the differences with one another by money balances; sometimes they actually divert traffic from one line to another. But the advantage of either of these arrangements over a mere agreement to maintain rates is that they cannot be violated without direct action on the part of the leading authorities of the roads concerned-either in open withdrawal, or in actual bad faith. The ordinary

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road in whose behalf they are undertaken. Its percentage being fixed there is no motive for rate-cutting. So great is this advantage that pooling is accepted in almost all other countries as a natural means of maintaining equality of rates; the state railroads of Central Europe entering into such contracts with competing private lines and even with waterroutes. In America itself, pools have had a longer and wider history than is generally supposed. In New England they arose and continued to exist on a moderate scale without attracting much attention. In the Mississippi Valley, the Chicago-Omaha pool began as early as 1870, and formed the model for a whole system of such arrangements extending

as far as the Pacific Coast. But, as involving wider questions of public policy, the activity of the Southern and the Trunk Line Associations has attracted chief attention.

The man whose name is most prominently identified with both these sys

Albert Fink.

tems is Albert Fink. A German by birth and education, his long experience as a practical railroad engineer did not deprive him of a taste for studying traffic problems on their theoretical side. As Vice-President of the Louisville and Nashville, he had given special attention to the economic conditions affecting the southern roads; and when, in the years 1873-75, a traffic association was formed by a number of these roads to secure harmony of action on matters of common interest, he became the recognized leader. His success in arrangements for through traffic was so conspicuous that when, in 1877, the trunk lines were exhausted with an unusually destructive war of rates, they looked to him as the only man who could deliver them from their trouble. In some lines, division

of traffic had already been resorted to: but it was in the hands of outside parties, like the Standard Oil Company or the cattle eveners, and was made a means of oppression against shippers not in the combination itself.

The conditions were not favorable; the result of Fink's efforts to bring order out of chaos was slow and by no means uninterrupted. Yet on the whole, as was admitted even by opponents of the pooling system, it contributed to steadiness and equality of rates. The arrangement of these agreements was hampered by their want of legal status. While the law did not at that time actually prohibit them, it refused to enforce them. Existing thus on sufferance, they depended on the good will of the contracting parties. None but a man of Fink's unimpeached integrity and high intellectual power could have kept matters running at all; and even he could not prevent the adoption of a policy of making hay while the sun shines, more or less regardless of the future. The results of the trunk-line pool were unsatisfactory-most of all to those who believed in pools as a system; but it is fair to attribute a large part of this failure to the absence of legal recognition, which in a manner compelled the agreements to be arranged to meet the demands of the day rather than of the future.

Meantime an equally important contribution to the solution of the railroad question was being worked out in another quarter. In the year 1869 the Massachusetts Railroad Commission was established. Its powers were so slight that it was not regarded as likely to be an influential public agency. Fortunately it numbered among its members Charles Francis Adams, Jr.; a man whose efficiency more than made up for any want of nominal powers. In his hands the mere power to report became the most effective of all weapons. Repre

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senting at once enlightened public fected-largely by the influence of Senjudgment and far-sighted railroad ator Cullom. As compromises go, it policy, he did much to bring the two was a tolerably fair one. The extreminto harmony and protect the legiti- ists sacrificed their opposition to a mate interests on both sides from short- commission, but secured the prohibisighted misuse for the benefit of either tion of pools; the disputed points with party. The detail of his work is matter regard to rates were left in such a shape of past history; perhaps its most prom- that no man knew what the law meant, inent result was to introduce to State and each was, for the time being, able legislation the idea of a railroad com- to interpret it to suit the wishes of his mission as an administrative body. Congressional district. Those States which had no stringent laws appointed commissions to take their place; those which had overstringent ones appointed commissions to use discretion in applying them. In either case, the existence of a body of men representing the State, but possessing the technical knowledge to see what the exigencies of railroad business demanded, was a protection to all parties concerned.

But matters were rapidly passing beyond the sphere of State legislation. Each new consolidation of systems, each additional development of through traffic, made it more impossible to control railroad policy by the action of individual States. It could only be done by a development of the law in the United States courts or by Congressional legislation. The former result was necessarily slow; each year showed an increased demand for special action on the part of Congress. But such action was hindered by divergence of opinion in that body itself. One set of men wished a moderate law, prohibiting the most serious abuses of railroad power, and enforced under the discretionary care of a commission. These men were for the most part not unwilling to see pools legalized if their members could thereby be held to a fuller measure of responsibility. On the other hand, the extremists wished to prescribe a system of equal mileage rates; they would hear of no such thing as a commission, and hated pools as an invention of the adversary. Between the two lay a large body of members who had no convictions on the matter, but were desirous to please everybody and offend nobody-a hard task in this particular case. It was nearly nine years from the time Mr. Reagan introduced his first bill when a compromise was finally ef

The immediate effects of the law were extremely good. There were certain sections of it, like those which secured publicity of rates and equal treatment for different persons in the same circumstances, whose wisdom was universally admitted. Indeed it was rather a disgrace, both to the railroad agents and to the courts, that we had to wait for an act of Congress to secure these ends; and most of the railroads made up for past remissness in this respect by quite à spasm of virtue. In some instances

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sion, and one which they were not slow

to use.

The President was fortunate in his selection of commissioners; above all

Thomas M. Cooley.

in the chairman, Judge T. M. Cooley, of Michigan, a man whose character, knowledge of public law, and technical familiarity with railroad business made him singularly well fitted for the place. The work of the Interstate Commission, like that of its Massachusetts prototype, shows how much more important is personal power than mere technical authority. It was supposed at first that the commission would be a purely administrative body, with discretion to suspend the law. Instead of this, they have enforced and interpreted it; and in the process of interpretation have

virtually created a body of additional law, which is read and quoted as authority. With but little ground for expecting it from the letter of the act, they have become a judicial body of the highest importance. Their existence seems to furnish a possibility for an elastic development of transportation law, neither so weak as to be ineffective nor so strong as to break by its own rigidity.

But the final test of their success is yet to come. They have laid down a few principles as to the cases when competition justifies through rates lower than those at intermediate points. But the application of these principles is as yet far from settled; and it is rendered doubly hard by the clause against pools, which does much to hamper the roads in any attempt to secure common action on the matter of through rates. Each ill-judged piece of State legislation, and each reckless attempt to attack railroad profits, increases the difficulty. There was a time when the powers of railroad managers were developed without corresponding responsibility. In many parts of the country we are now going to the other extreme-increasing the responsibility of railroad authorities toward shipper and employees, State law and national commission, and at the same time striving to restrict their powers to the utmost. Such a policy cannot be continued indefinitely without a disastrous effect upon railroad service, and, indirectly, upon the business of the country as a whole.

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The young brown reapers lolled afield; Seaward they drove the roaring main

The cattle stood in stall;

The watchman slept beneath his shield, Upon the sunlit wall.

The princess and a page between The ranks where lilies flower, Leaning below the lilies' screen, With kisses marked the hour.

Yet heedless from his lattices

The King still looked without: The north wind blowing in the trees Was like a battle-shout;

Betimes he thought the leafy lane Broke white before the blast; Betimes a gull's wing in the rain Seemed like a slanting mast.

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Leaped up to meet the rail; Loud shrilled the blast, loud rang the Upon the windy sail.

[rain

And seething waves joined in the race;
Like horses wild with pain,
They set the ship a madman's pace
And shook each whitened mane.

Where broke the tall wave-crests of
They saw their old gods go; [green
To them the hidden was the seen,
And one were weal and woe.

The vaporous coasts they ever fled, The purple isles they passed; Dearer to them the way that led Into the stinging blast.

And dear the black flaws on the lee,
And dear the sleeted rain;

For them the wide, mysterious sea
Was still their best domain.

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