adaptable to changing conditions
and, for lack of administrative agents, could not be enforced. Some
early efforts at state ownership were disastrous. The old law of
common carriers gave to individual shippers an uncertain redress in
the courts for unreasonable rates; but the remedy was costly because
the aggrieved shipper had to employ counsel, to gather evidence, and
to risk the penalty of failure; it was slow, for, while delay was
death to the shipper's business, cases hung for months or years in
the courts; it was ineffectual, for, even when the case was won, the
shipper was not repaid for all his losses, and the same discrimination
could be immediately repeated against him and other shippers.

In the older Eastern states, attempts to remedy these and other evils
by creating some kind of a state railroad commission date back to the
fifties of the last century. Massachusetts developed in the seventies
a commission of "the advisory type" which investigated and made public
the conditions, leaving to public opinion the correction of the evils.
A number of the Western states, notably Illinois and Iowa, developed
in the seventies commissions of "the strong type," with power to fix
rates and to enforce their rulings. The commission principle, strongly
opposed at first by the railroads, was upheld by the courts and became
established public policy. By 1915 every state and the District of
Columbia had a state commission. In Wisconsin and in New York, in
1907, in New Jersey, in 1911, and in many other states since, the
"railroad" commissions were replaced by "public utilities" or "public
service" commissions, having control not only over the railroads but
over street railway, gas, electric light, telephone, and some other
corporations. The state commissions have found their chief field
in the regulation of local utilities, and they fall far short of a
solution of the railroad problem. Altho they from the first did much
to make the accounts of the railroads intelligible, something to make
the local rates reasonable and subject to rule, and much to educate
public sentiment, on the whole their results have been disappointing.
It was difficult to get commissioners at once strong, able, and
honest; the public did not know its own mind well enough to
support the commissions properly; and the courts decided that state
commissions could regulate only the traffic originating and ending
within the state.

Sec. 16. #Passage of the Int