their attitude on pending legislation and of publishing their
replies. Another favorite device was to hold Granger conventions in
state capitals while the legislature was sitting and thus to bring
personal pressure in the interest of their favorite bills. This method
of suasion is an extremely potent political force and explains the fact
that, in certain States where the Granges were most powerful, they had
practically everything their own way in railroad legislation.

The measures which they thus forced upon the statute books and which
represented the first comprehensive attempt to regulate railroads have
always been known as the "Granger Laws." These differed in severity
in different States, but in the main their outlines were the same.
Practically all the Granger legislatures prohibited free passes to
members of the legislatures and to public officials. A law fixing the
rate of passenger fares--the maximum ranging all the way from two and
one-half to five cents a mile--was a regular feature of the Granger
programme. Attempts were made to end the "long and short haul" abuse by
passing acts which prohibited any road from charging more for the short
distance than for the long one. More drastic still were the laws passed
by Iowa in 1874 and the famous Potter bill passed by Wisconsin in the
same year. Both these measures, besides fixing passenger fares, wrote
in the law itself detailed schedules of freight rates. The Iowa act
included a provision establishing a fund of $10,000 which was to be used
by private individuals to pay the expenses of suits for damages under
the act, and this same act made all railroad officials and employees
who were convicted of violations subject to fine and imprisonment.
The Potter act was even more severe. It not only fixed maximum freight
rates, but it established classifications of its own. The railroads
asserted that the framers of this law had simply taken the lowest rates
in force everywhere and reduced them twenty-five per cent. But Iowa and
Wisconsin and practically all the States that passed the Granger
laws also established railroad commissions. For the most part these
commissions followed the model of that established by Massachusetts
in 1869, a body which had little mandatory authority to fix rates or
determine service, but which depended upon persuasion, arbitration, and,
above all, publicity, to accomplish the desired ends. The Massachusetts
commission, largely owing to the high