c prejudice against what was called
centralization. A tradition of local control over the machinery of
transit and transportation was dominant during the early period of
railroad construction. The fact that railways would finally become the
all-important vehicles of inter-state commerce was either overlooked or
considered unimportant. The general government did not interfere--except
when, as in the case of the Pacific lines, its interference and
assistance were solicited by private interests. For a long time the idea
that the Federal government had any general responsibility in respect to
the national transportation system was devoid of practical consequences.

In the end an Inter-state Commerce law was passed, in which the
presence of a national interest in respect to the American system of
transportation was recognized. But this law, like our tariff laws, was
framed for the benefit chiefly of a combination of local and special
interests; and it served little to advance any genuine national interest
in relation to the railroads. To be sure it did forbid rebates, but the
machinery for enforcing the prohibition was inefficient, and during
another twenty years the prohibition remained substantially a dead
letter. The provisions of the law forbidding rebates were in truth
merely a bit of legal hypocrisy. Rebates could not be openly defended;
but the business of the country was honeycombed with them, and the
majority of the shippers in whose interest the law was passed did not
want the prohibition enforced. Their influence at Washington was
sufficiently powerful to prevent the adoption of any effective measures
for the abatement of the evil. The Federal Inter-state Commerce
Commission, unlike the local authorities, would have been fully
competent to abolish rebates; but the plain truth was that the effective
public opinion in the business world either supported the evil or
connived at it. The private interests at stake were, for the time being,
too strong for the public interest. The whole American business
tradition was opposed to government interference with prevailing
business practices; and in view of this fact the responsibility for the
rebates cannot be fixed merely upon the railroads and the trusts. The
American system had licensed energetic and unscrupulous individual
aggrandizement as the best means of securing a public benefit; and
rebates were merely a flagrant instance of the extent to which public
opinion permi