established commissions to administer those laws.

THE INTERSTATE COMMERCE LAW

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.)]

XIII. STOCK AND PRODUCE EXCHANGES

THE STOCK EXCHANGE

The stock exchanges of the world must not be considered simply as
noisy congregations of brokers speculating in securities under the
guise of legitimate business. They really play an important and
necessary part in the financial mechanism of the country, and are
instruments of enormous value in subdividing and distributing capital,
and in directing its employment in great commercial and industrial
enterprises.

The largest stock exchange of the world is that of London. It is not
only the centre of the English market for stocks and securities but,
like the Bank of England, it is linked internationally with nearly all
the financial centres of the world. Almost every reputable security is
marketable in London, either through the ordinary channels provided by
arbitrage dealers, who buy in the cheaper and sell in the dearer
markets, or through the agency of trusts and investment concerns. The
magnitude and extent of the financial resources of the London Stock
Exchange are enormous. Its adv