.

* See "John Marshall and the Constitution", by Edward S.
Corwin (in "The Chronicles of America"), p. 154 ff.

The first gun in this fight for railroad regulation was fired in
Illinois. As early as 1869, after several years of agitation, the
legislature passed an act declaring that railroads should be limited to
"just, reasonable, and uniform rates," but, as no provision was made for
determining what such rates were, the act was a mere encumbrance on
the statute books. In the new state constitution of 1870, however, the
framers, influenced by a growing demand on the part of the farmers
which manifested itself in a Producers' Convention, inserted a section
directing the legislature to "pass laws to correct abuses and to
prevent unjust discrimination and extortion in the rates of freight
and passenger tariffs on the different railroads in this State." The
legislature at its next session appears to have made an honest attempt
to obey these instructions. One act established maximum passenger fares
varying from two and one-half to five and one-half cents a mile for the
different classes into which the roads were divided. Another provided,
in effect, that freight charges should be based entirely upon distance
traversed and prohibited any increases over rates in 1870. This amounted
to an attempt to force all rates to the level of the lowest competitive
rates of that year. Finally, a third act established a board of railroad
and warehouse commissioners charged with the enforcement of these and
other laws and with the collection of information.

The railroad companies, denying the right of the State to regulate their
business, flatly refused to obey the laws; and the state supreme court
declared the act regulating freight rates unconstitutional on the ground
that it attempted to prevent not only unjust discrimination but any
discrimination at all. The legislature then passed the Act of
1873, which avoided the constitutional pitfall by providing that
discriminatory rates should be considered as prima facie but not
absolute evidence of unjust discrimination. The railroads were thus
permitted to adduce evidence to show that the discrimination was
justified, but the act expressly stated that the existence of
competition at some points and its nonexistence at others should not be
deemed a sufficient justification of discrimination. In order to prevent
the roads from raising all rates to the level of the highest instead