rriers, and especially railroads, this author
says:

"The sovereign has always assumed peculiar control over
common carriers as conducting a business in which the public
has an interest, and in the case of railway carriers an
additional basis of governmental control is grounded in the
extraordinary franchise of eminent domain conferred upon
these companies. For corporations engaged in carrying goods
for hire as common carriers have no right to discriminate in
freight rates in favor of one shipper, even when necessary
to secure his custom, if the discriminating rate will tend
to create a monopoly by excluding from their proper markets
the products of the competitors of the favored shipper."

If railroads had no obligations or advantages beyond those of other
common carriers, such as stage lines and steamship companies, their
discriminations might be less objectionable, but, as keepers of the
toll-gates of the public highways, they are no more at liberty to
regulate their own business regardless of the public welfare than were
their predecessors, the toll-collectors stationed along the public
turnpikes and canals. As such public tax-collectors they are bound to
give equal treatment to all persons and places.

Although the business of constructing and keeping in repair the turnpike
roads was, as a rule, left to private persons, and the promoters of such
enterprises were permitted to reimburse themselves for their outlay by
the collection of tolls, their schedules of tolls were prescribed by the
State and their business was placed under the supervision of public
officers, whose duty it was to see that neither extortion nor
discrimination was practiced in the collection of these tolls, and that
the private management of a public business did not become the source of
abuse. The State thus insisted upon exercising a restraining influence
over the business of turnpike companies because it realized the danger
of entrusting the management of a semi-public business to companies
organized solely for private gain, with officers responsible only to
their stockholders, who, under ordinary circumstances, could be relied
upon to measure the usefulness of an employe by his ability to
contribute to the increase of the annual dividends. It will scarcely be
claimed, even by railroad men, that since the days of turnpikes and
stage-coaches corporations have become more unsel