er they found an opportunity to make the new laws appear
obnoxious in the eyes of the people, were not slow to seize it.
That section of the Illinois law of 1873 which prohibited unjust
discrimination went into effect in July, but the maximum freight rates
were not fixed until January of 1874. As a result of this situation, the
railroads in July made all their freight rates uniform, according to the
law, but accomplished this uniformity by raising the low rates instead
of lowering the high. In Minnesota, similarly, the St. Paul and Pacific
road, in its zeal to establish uniform passenger rates, raised the fare
between St. Paul and Minneapolis from three to five cents a mile, in
order to make it conform to the rates elsewhere in the State. The
St. Paul and Sioux City road declared that the Granger law made its
operation unprofitable, and it so reduced its train service that
the people petitioned the commission to restore the former rate. In
Wisconsin, when the state supreme court affirmed the constitutionality
of the radical Potter law, the railroads retaliated in some cases by
carrying out their threat to give the public "Potter cars, Potter rails,
and Potter time." As a result the public soon demanded the repeal of the
law.

In all the States but Illinois the Granger laws were repealed before
they had been given a fair trial. The commissions remained in existence,
however, although with merely advisory functions; and they sometimes
did good service in the arbitration of disputes between shippers and
railroads. Interest in the railroad problem died down for the time, but
every one of the Granger States subsequently enacted for the regulation
of railroad rates statutes which, although more scientific than the laws
of the seventies, are the same in principle. The Granger laws thus
paved the way not only for future and more enduring legislation in these
States but also for similar legislation in most of the other States of
the Union and even for the national regulation of railroads through the
Interstate Commerce Commission.

The Supreme Court of the United States was the theater for the final
stage of this conflict between the railroads and the farmers. In
October, 1876, decisions were handed down together in eight cases which
had been appealed from federal circuit and state courts in Illinois,
Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, and which involved the validity of the
Granger laws. The fundamental issue was the same in all t