character and ability of
its membership--Charles Francis Adams serving as chairman for many
years--had worked admirably. In the most part these new Western
commissions were limited in their activities to regulating accounting,
obtaining detailed reports, collecting statistics, and enforcing the new
railroad laws.

These measures, following one another in rapid succession, produced
a national, even an international sensation. The railroad managements
stood aghast at what they regarded as demagogic invasions of their
rights, and the more conservative elements of the American public looked
upon them as a violent attack upon property. Up to this time there had
been little general understanding of the nature of railroad property. In
the minds of most people a railroad was a business, precisely like
any other business, and the modern notion that it was "affected with a
public interest" and that the public was therefore necessarily a partner
in the railroad business had made practically no headway. "Can't I do
what I want with my own?" Commodore Vanderbilt had exclaimed, asserting
his exclusive right to control the operations of the New York Central
system; and that question fairly well represented the popular attitude.
That the railroad exercised certain rights of sovereignty, such as that
of eminent domain, that it actually used in its operations property
belonging to the State, and that these facts in themselves gave the
State the right to supervise its management, and even, if necessity
arose, to control it--all this may have been recognized as an abstruse
legal proposition, but it occupied no practical place in the business
consciousness of that time. Naturally the first step of the railroads
was therefore to contest the constitutionality of the laws, and while
these suits were pending they resorted to various expedients to evade
these laws or to mitigate their severity. A touch of liveliness and
humor was added to the situation by the thousands of legal fare cases
that filled the courts, for farmers used to indulge in one of their
favorite agricultural sports--getting on trains and tendering the
legal two and a half cents a mile fare, a situation that usually led to
ejectment for nonpayment and then to a suit for damages. The railroads
easily met the laws forbidding lighter charges for long than for short
hauls by increasing the rates for the longer distances, and the laws
fixing maximum rates within the State by increas