After fifteen years of agitation and investigation the existing
interstate commerce law was enacted in 1887. The law prohibits
unreasonable rates and unjust discriminations between persons, places,
and classes of traffic, prohibits pooling agreements, provides
penalties for the violation of the law, and establishes a commission
of five men to administer and enforce the statute. Fortunately for the
commission and for the country the first chairman of that body was the
eminent jurist, Thomas M. Cooley, whose master mind did much to give
vitality to the law.
During the first five years after the law was passed it secured a
fairly efficient regulation of interstate railway commerce, but recent
decisions of the United States Supreme Court have so weakened the law
that at present the commission has very little power. The commission
can investigate complaints and make reports, it can collect
statistical information, it can and does informally adjust many
differences between shippers and carriers; but, to quote from the last
report of the commission, "it has ceased to be a body for the
regulation of interstate carriers." Legislation to amend and
strengthen the interstate commerce law is urgently needed.
[Illustration: Judge Thomas M. Cooley. (First chairman of the interstate
commerce commission.)]