ve produced
that problem which is even now apparently far from solution.

Railroads had been operating for many years in this country before it
dawned upon the farmers that this great improvement, which many had
hailed as his greatest friend, might be his greatest enemy. It had been
operating for several decades in the manufacturing sections before the
enterprising industrialist discovered that the railroad might not only
build up his business but also destroy it. From these discoveries arose
all those discordant cries of "extortion," "rebate," "competition,"
"long haul and short haul," "regulation," and "government ownership,"
which have given railroad literature a vocabulary all its own and have
written new chapters in the science of economics. The storm center of
all this agitation concerned primarily one thing--the amount which the
railroad might fairly charge for transporting passengers and freight.
The battle of the people with the railroads for fifty years has been
the "battle of the rate." This has taken mainly two forms, the agrarian
agitation of the West against transportation charges, and the fight of
the manufacturing centers, mainly in the East, against discriminations.
Perhaps its most characteristic episodes have been the fight of the
"Grangers" and their successors against the trunk lines and that of the
general public against the Standard Oil Company.

Even in the fifties and the sixties, the American public had its
railroad problem, but it was quite different in character from the one
with which we have since grown so familiar. The problem in this earlier
period was merely that of getting more railroads. The farmer pioneers
in those days were not demanding lower rates, better service, and no
discrimination and antipooling clauses; they asked for the building
of more lines upon practically any terms. This insistence on railroad
construction in the sixties explains to a great extent the difficulties
subsequently encountered. In a large number of cases railroad building
became a purely speculative enterprise; the capitalists who engaged in
this business had no interest in transportation but were seeking merely
to make their fortunes out of constructing the lines. Not infrequently
the farmers themselves furnished a considerable amount of money,
expecting to obtain not only personal dividends on the investment but
larger general dividends in the shape of cheap transportation rates and
the development of th