for railway employees and certain other small classes of persons,
including the poor and unfortunate classes and those engaged in
religious and charitable work. Under the old law, the Commission was
compelled to apply to a Federal court on its own initiative for the
enforcement of any order which it might issue. Under the Hepburn act
the order went into effect at once; the railroad must begin to obey the
order within thirty days; it must itself appeal to the court for the
suspension and revocation of the order, or it must suffer a penalty
of $5000 a day during the time that the order was disobeyed. The act
further gave the Commission the power to prescribe accounting methods
which must be followed by the railways, in order to make more difficult
the concealment of illegal rates and improper favors to individual
shippers. This extension and strengthening of the authority of the
Interstate Commerce Commission was an extremely valuable forward step,
not only as concerned the relations of the public and the railways,
but in connection with the development of predatory corporations of the
Standard Oil type. Miss Ida Tarbell, in her frankly revealing "History
of the Standard Oil Company", which had been published in 1904, had
shown in striking fashion how secret concessions from the railways had
helped to build up that great structure of business monopoly. In Miss
Tarbell's words, "Mr. Rockefeller's great purpose had been made possible
by his remarkable manipulation of the railroads. It was the rebate which
had made the Standard Oil trust, the rebate, amplified, systematized,
glorified into a power never equalled before or since by any business
of the country." The rebate was the device by which favored
shippers--favored by the railways either voluntarily or under the
compulsion of the threats of retaliation which the powerful shippers
were able to make--paid openly the established freight rates on
their products and then received back from the railways a substantial
proportion of the charges. The advantage to the favored shipper is
obvious. There were other more adroit ways in which the favoritism could
be accomplished; but the general principle was the same. It was one
important purpose--and effect--of the Hepburn act to close the door to
this form of discrimination.

One more step was necessary in order to eradicate completely this
mischievous condition and to "keep the highway of commerce open to all
on equal terms." It