t is doing a public business and not a
private business, and therefore it should be governed by rules
applicable to public business, and not such as are applicable to private
business. It is admitted by all that for the services which it performs
the operating company should receive a reasonable compensation; but to
say what a reasonable compensation is, how it shall be collected, and to
prescribe rules regulating the business of the public carrier, is
solely the right and the duty of the State. The people have never
permitted the rate of any other public charge to be fixed by the
beneficiary. Why, then, should privileges be conceded to one beneficiary
which are denied to all others?

The assertion is often made by railroad managers that railroad
transportation is a private business as much as any other branch of
commerce. It is not likely that these same managers would wish to have
their argument carried to its logical conclusion, for, should the courts
at any time take their view, they would be under the necessity of
declaring null and void all their charters, which were granted to them
upon the assumption that the railroad was a highway operated under the
authority and control of the State by private companies for the public
good. If, on the other hand, railroad managers are, for their own
protection, forced to recognize the public character of railroads, they
can no longer question the right of the State to so control their
business as the public good may demand. And this shows the absurdity of
the claim often made by railroad managers, that, as long as the rates
charged by them are reasonable, the State has no right to interfere with
their business, or, in other words, that they may discriminate between
individuals and localities, and that they may legally practice a
thousand other abuses as long as individual shippers find it beyond
their power to prove that they have been charged exorbitant rates.

Charles Fisk Beach, Jr., in his "Commentaries on the Law of Private
Corporations," lays it down as a general principle of law that "whenever
any person pursues a public calling and sustains such relations to the
public that the people must of necessity deal with him, and are under a
moral duress to submit to his terms if he is unrestrained by law, then,
in order to prevent extortion and an abuse of his position, the price he
may charge for his services may be regulated by law." And applying this
principle to common ca