advantage to any particular person, or corporation, firm, or locality, or class of traffic.* It forbids the charging, under like circumstances, of a larger sum for the shorter than for the longer haul over the same road. It prohibits the pooling of freights and the division of earnings, requires publicity of rates, and confers upon the Interstate Commerce Commission, created by act of Congress, power to carry out its provisions. This act was amended by the acts of 1889, 1891, 1893, 1903, 1906, and 1910, each representing an addition to the organic growth of the power of Congress to regulate interstate interstate commerce. Of these the most important are the Elkins Act of 1903, which prevents unjust discrimination in railroad charges; the Hepburn Act of 1906 which first gave really effective force to provisions that were merely tentative in preceding acts; and the MannElkins Act of 1910, which extends the duties and jurisdiction of the Commission both as to carriers formerly subject to law and to other agencies of transportation and transmission. Although the passage of these laws was fought both by trusts and railroad companies, the result has been that the railroads have grown stronger each year, and the rigid prohibitions as to rebates and free passages had an immense effect in improving earnings. The laws that restrict freedom of action throughout the whole rail

*See pp. 35-36, ante. See also chapter on Interstate Commerce by Professor Huebner, ante.

road system, as to its administration, have created vastly improved economic conditions.

The Commission has power to inquire into the management of the business of the common carriers engaged in interstate commerce and to obtain all necessary information for destroying the rebate system and other discriminations, so as to put all shippers on a basis of equality. The Commission is not given the general rate-making power, however, though it can name a reasonable rate for a particular service and adjust overcharges. It also has authority to suspend proposed rates pending investigation as to their reasonableness. On the other hand, where circumstances require swift action, certain rates may be established on short notice. It is required by law to report to the Attorney-General all violations of the interstate commerce laws.

The Commission supervises also steamboat lines doing an interstate business in connection with the railroads under common control, and includes supervision of the interstate commerce of express companies, sleeping car companies, telegraph, cable, and wireless telegraph companies, and pipe line concerns transmitting commodities other than water or gas. The Commission has supervision of railroad accidents, and investigates all such accidents on its own initiative. Congress had adopted the policy of forcing upon railroad corporations the use of safety appliances to reduce ac

cidents to a minimum. The Block Signal and Train Control Board, organized by the Commission, has charge of investigating the thousands of devices that apply to signals, coupling of cars, ties, rails, switches, automatic train control, non-telescoping devices, and inspection of locomotives. Under the provisions of the Erdman Act, a member of the Commission may be appointed by the President to coöperate with the Commissioner of Labor with a view of settling any differences that may arise between railroads and their employés. This law has proved of great benefit to the parties concerned in settling many disputes by arbitration.

Anti-Trust Legislation.

An aggregation of several industrial organizations of a similar kind under a single control is denominated a trust.* The trust was preceded by the combination, which was a feature of industrial development from 1872 to 1882 and which aimed simply at similarity of action between the corporations included therein in maintain

vanced form of trust, and its successor in most cases, is the holding corporation, which differs in certain respects from the usual type of trust. Its property consists of a majority of shares of stock in various corporations, its directors voting the shares held by it at the meetings of the subsidiary corporations and receiving the apportioned dividends. A holding company is a corporation of corporations, which, by virtue of holding a majority of the stock in each, elects the directors of all and through them operates the individual corporations in the interest of the holding corporation.

The legal status of the holding corporation is highly complicated, since it operates under two conflicting jurisdictions, each supreme in its own field

those of the State and Federal governments. Many of the States, under the leadership of New Jersey, have made laws legalizing holding corporations under certain conditions, but these are subject to Federal control only in so far as they interfere with interstate trade.

Public opinion demanded that the

in the 80's by the trust. A more ad

* In this connection see the chapter on Trusts and Industrial Combinations and Associations, ante.

President on July 2, 1890.* This Act declares that every contract, combina

*For complete text see ante, pp. 46-47.

tion in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is illegal. Any person making such combination or conspiracy is guilty of a misdemeanor, and such offence is punishable by a fine not exceeding $5,000 or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or both punishments at the discretion of the court.

A significant example of the working of the Sherman Act is exhibited in the defeat of the Northern Securities Company, which was organized in 1901 under the laws of New Jersey as a holding corporation, with power to purchase the securities of any other corporation. Its certificates were exchanged for the stock and bonds of the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific railways, two parallel railway systems which were thus merged. The Supreme Court declared the combination illegal, being in restraint of interstate and international commerce.

While in theory the Sherman Law prohibits every combination in restraint of interstate commerce, yet in practice few of the large trusts have been prosecuted successfully. It has been held that its provisions are too dangerous to the innocent to be enforced against the guilty. But the act has demonstrated the important principle that Congress, by virtue of its power to regulate interstate commerce, may forbid any conspiracy or combination in restraint of interstate commerce and that a contract for

the purchase price of goods cannot be enforced if such contract forms one of the essential factors in an illegal scheme.

While the Sherman Anti-Trust Law was aimed chiefly at industrial combinations, the decisions of the Supreme Court have made this law an important part of legislation for the regulation of railroads. In fact, its interpretations have given it a wider field of action in inter-railway relations than as a regulator of the relations of purely industrial corporations. The enforcement of the Sherman Law has been greatly facilitated by the enactment of several laws making the testimony of witnesses compulsory and granting immunity to the persons so testifying. These laws, together with the “ together with the "Expediting Act " of 1903 (which provides that in important cases prosecuted under both the Interstate Commerce and Sherman acts, where the Government is the complainant, a direct appeal may be taken to the Supreme Court), have greatly facilitated the enforcement of trust legislation.

But up to the present time antitrust legislation has failed to destroy the tendency of corporations to become monopolies or to repress the restraints they exercise upon production and trade. In 1892, when the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, the first and most famous trust, was declared by the circuit court to be an illegal combination, the trustees dissolved the corporation by exchang

ing its certificates for a pro rata number of shares in 20 subordinate corporations which controlled the remaining companies in the original trust. In 1899 the charter of the company was amended to allow it to hold and

sell the stock of other corporations, and thus the company became the holding company for the Standard Oil interests then distributed among 19 concerns. In 1906 the Attorney-General sued the company in the United States court, and in 1909 its decision declared the company an illegal combination under the Sherman AntiTrust Act and enjoined it from continuing business in its existing form. The company simply exchanged its certificates for shares pro rata in each

The work and province of the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization are clearly expressed in its name. A tax of $4 per immigrant more than defrays the cost of maintaining this Bureau. The Act to Encourage Immigration passed in 1864 allowed the agents of American employers to employ laborers in foreign countries who pledged their wages for cost of shipment hither. This act was repealed in 1868, and in 1875 the importation of coolies was forbidden. senger Act of 1882 excluded convicts, lunatics, idiots, or any persons likely to become a public charge. The Knights of Labor started an agitation against the competition of em

The Pas

continues doing business, as heretofore, under a mere technical change of form. Another important case was that of the so-called Tobacco Trust.

The Department of Commerce and Labor. No other department of the Federal government comprises such varied activities for the regulation of commerce and labor as this. The Bureau of Corporations, established in 1903, is authorized to make diligent investigation into the organization, conduct, and management of the business of any corporation, joint stock company, or corporate combination engaged in commerce among the several States, so as to furnish Congress data for legislation for the regulation of such

commerce.

European wages, and in 1885 the Alien Contract Labor Law made it unlawful to assist the immigration of foreign labor under wage contract. Chinese are excluded by the Exclusion Act of 1882, reënacted in 1902.

The Bureau of Labor is concerned with the more radical study of the condition of the laboring classes of the country, but not with the enforcement of labor laws. It collects and publishes information regarding the cost of food, the economic laws for the amelioration of the condition of the working population in other countries, the railroad pension systems in the United States, strikes and strike conditions, laws enforcing compensation for accidents to workmen in foreign countries, old age pensions wherever