tually eradicated, other abuses of railroad management which have
been the subject of public complaint will not long survive them.

One of the strongest arguments that could be adduced by the founders of
the American Constitution in favor of the establishment of a more
perfect union was that the inequality of taxes placed upon commerce by
the various States was a serious obstacle to its free development. Much
as the individual States dislike to give up a part of their sovereignty
to a central or national power, the demand for a common and uniform
system of commercial taxation was so great that they were forced to
yield and ratify the new Constitution. Our forefathers thus considered
it a dangerous policy to permit a single State to lay any imposts upon
the commercial commodities which passed over its borders. They were
rightly of the opinion that industrial and commercial liberty was as
essential to the welfare of the nation as political freedom and that
therefore interstate commerce should not be hemmed in or controlled
within State lines, but that the power to regulate it should be lodged
in the supreme legislative authority of the nation, the Congress of the
United States. For over half a century Congress alone exercised the
power thus conferred upon it by the people. After the introduction of
railroads, however, their managers gradually assumed the right to
regulate the commerce of the country in their own interest through the
adoption of arbitrary freight tariffs. Freight charges are practically a
tax which follows the commodity from the producer to the consumer. An
arbitrary and unjust charge is therefore an arbitrary and unjust tax
imposed upon the public without its consent. It is a well-established
rule of society that laws should be equitable and just to all citizens.
Congress never assumed the role of Providence by attempting to equalize
those differences among individuals which superior intellect, greater
industry and a thousand other uncontrollable forces have ever created
and will ever create. It has been reserved to railroad managers to
demonstrate to the public that a power has been allowed to grow up which
has assumed the right to counteract the dispensations of Providence, to
enrich the slothful, to impoverish the industrious, to curtail the
profits of remunerative industries and revive by bounties those
languishing for want of vitality, to humble proud and self-reliant marts
of trade and to build up ci