, and the
question arose as to the extent to which forfeiture should be imposed
upon them. The spectacular completion of their lines and their efforts
to bring a population into the West, and the vast size of the
corporations that owned them, had aroused a hostile opinion that
supported the Democratic Administration in its efforts to save what
lands it could. Some fifty million acres were restored to the domain by
this fight, but the restoration only emphasized the fact that most of
the good lands were gone.

Out of the demand for the reform of the public lands grew a new interest
in the condition of the lands that were left. The Department of
Agriculture was created at the end of Cleveland's term, and Governor
Jeremiah Rusk was appointed as its first Secretary by Harrison. Rusk
accepted cheerfully his place as "the tail of the Cabinet," asserting
that as such he was expected "to keep the flies off," and set about
rearranging or organizing a group of scientific bureaus. Since most of
the remaining lands could not be used without irrigation, the surveys
undertaken by Congress started a new phase of public science, and led
ultimately to the rise of a positive theory of conservation.

The problems of national communication, Western settlement, and public
lands resulted from the completion of the continental railways, while
the railways themselves gave a new significance to transportation in
America. During the years of the Granger movement the doctrine had been
established that railroads are quasi-public and are subject to
regulation by public authority. In the Granger Cases in 1877 the Supreme
Court recognized the right of the States to establish rates by law, even
when these rates, by becoming part of a through rate, had an incidental
effect upon interstate commerce. The problem had been viewed as local
or regional during the seventies. Most of the States had passed railway
laws and had proceeded to accumulate a volume of statistical information
upon the railway business, that was increased by such public
investigations as the Windom and Hepburn Reports and by lawsuits that
revealed the nature of special favors and rebates.

Before the States had gone far in the direction of railway regulation it
was discovered that no State could regulate an interstate railway with
precision and justice. The great systems built up by Villard and Gould
and Vanderbilt and Huntington dominated whole regions and precipitated
the question