railway
or public service commission to fix all rates, including telephone and
telegraph. Passenger rates are now usually fixed at two cents per mile
in the East, or at two and one-half cents in the South or West. In
1907 Kansas and Nebraska arbitrarily reduced all freight rates fifteen
per cent. on the price then charged. In 1907 there was some evidence
of reaction; Alabama, in an extra session, repealed her law enacted
the same year prescribing maximum freight rates, substituting more
moderate rates in seven "groups" (which, however, may be changed by
the railway commission!), and also enacted a statute directing the
commission and the attorney-general not to enforce the earlier law;
while the heavily penal Minnesota law was declared unconstitutional by
the United States Supreme Court. In the British empire the power to
fix rates is, of course, unquestioned; and they are, as to railways
at least, generally regulated by law. Canada in 1903 established
a railroad commission, and Nova Scotia in 1908 imposed various
restrictions as to tolls, still the English word for rates. So in
Ontario and Quebec in 1906, and in Tasmania in 1901. In many States,
such as Victoria, the railways are owned by the state, in which case,
of course, no question as to the right to fix rates can arise.

IX

TRUSTS AND MONOPOLIES

Legislation against combinations of properties to bring about
monopoly, or contracts in restraint of trade, is the last field of
legislation we have to consider in connection with property, and
possibly in the public mind the most important. Although the law
against combinations of laborers rests upon much the same principles,
it is perhaps best to give a special chapter to combinations of
property, leaving labor combinations to be treated in that special
connection. The matter has been written up so voluminously that it
might be difficult to say anything new upon the subject, yet for that
very reason it may be as well to analyze it into its simplest elements
at the common law, and then trace its recent development in our
somewhat unintelligent statute-making. At common law, then, these
obnoxious acts may be analyzed into five definite heads: forestalling,
regrating, and engrossing--which have been thoroughly defined in an
earlier chapter and the modern form of which in modern language might
be called restraining production or fixing prices, the buying
and selling of futures or gambling contracts, and corner