Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Limitations of Governmental Regulation of the Railroads: An Argument Before the Committee on Interstate, and Foreign Commerce of the House of Representatives, March 9, 1894, and Before the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce April 3, 1894
Occasionally the general freight agents or other officers having the management of the freight traffic of rival roads would meet together and agree as to the rates which should prevail; but whenever an agree ment of this sort was entered into there seemed always to be a mental reservation on the part of each traffic manager that his observance of the agreed rate was conditioned upon the fact that his road was to secure the share of the traffic to which he believed it to be entitled. It turned out, therefore, almost invariably that soon after such agree ments were made the soliciting agents of one or more of the competing lines would resort to the cutting of rates in order to make up their share of the traffic in consequence of representations, either true or false, made by shippers, to the effect that offers of cut rates had been made to them by the agents of competing lines.
It seemed for awhile as though the evolution of the American rail road system had proceeded beneficially up to a certain point and then fallen into irretrievable disorder. And yet it was too absurd to assume that the men of this generation had created a vast and potential system of transportation which they lacked the virtue or ability to administer.
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