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RATE REGULATION

WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE POWERS OF THE

INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION

UNDER THE ACTS TO REGULATE COMMERCE

BY

JOSEPH HENRY BEALE, A. M., LL.B., LL.D.

ROYALL PROFESSOR OF LAW IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
SOMETIME DEAN OF THE CHICAGO LAW

AND

RECENTLY

AND

BRUCE WYMAN, A. M., LL.B.

SCHOOL

PROFESSOR OF LAW IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
NOW IN CONSULTING PRACTICE AT THE MASSACHUSETTS BAR

SECOND EDITION

BY

BRUCE WYMAN

NEW YORK

BAKER, VOORHIS & CO.

208327

Copyright, 1906,

BY JOSEPH HENRY BEALE, JR.,

AND

BRUCE WYMAN.

Copyright, 1907,

BY JOSEPH HENRY BEALE, JR.,

AND

BRUCE WYMAN.

Copyright, 1915,

BY BRUCE WYMAN.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The historical development of the general principles of rate regulation receive such attention throughout the course of this book from the very beginning that there would seem to be no reason for undertaking any summary of them in this place. But in preface to a Second Edition one cannot fail to remark the extraordinary growth in the subject he is treating in the few years which have passed since the First Edition was written. The occasion for the writing of this book originally was the belief that by the passing of the Hepburn Act of 1906 the Interstate Commerce Commission was to have a power in shaping the destinies of the commerce of the country beyond anything which would have been possible under the Act to Regulate Commerce of 1887. In writing the First Edition we had only the rulings of the original Commission to guide us and the few decisions of the Courts, mostly to the effect that the Act did not justify what was ordered. In this Second Edition we have the many volumes of the Commission making orders as to future conduct, which are supported in most instances by the decisions of the Courts. This Second Edition, covering the past eight years of the activities of the Commission, has several hundred per cent more opinions as the basis for its text than the First Edition, covering the first twenty years.

The story of the rise of the Commission by successive amendments to the Act is told so fully in the early chapters of this Edition that it need not be anticipated here. To one who has had anything to do with directing in consultation as counsel the policies to be pursued in answering complaints filed before the Commission, the necessity seems apparent of being conversant with the dates of the additions to the powers of the Commission in order to be

able to know what rulings of a former time are no longer of current authority under the Act as it now reads. And it may be pointed out that, in addition to the progress in the extension of the jurisdiction of the Commission by changes in the Act by Congress, there may be seen, by one who is accustomed to look for development in the law by the course of the decisions of those administering it, a continual revelation of the expansion of the scope of the obligations to the public of the carriers conducting transportation subject to the Act. And from all this one can attempt with some confidence to prophesy as to the likelihood of further advance in the authority of the Commission, as a lawyer in practice must inevitably be able to do with respect to every new case brought to his attention.

In the First Edition of this book fully a third of the text was devoted to an exposition of the fundamental obligations of public employment in general and common carriers in particular. At that time there was no general discussion of public employment and its necessary incidents in any book; but even in the few years which have intervened the general principles of the peculiar law of public calling have become well understood. In 1911 in writing his general treatise on Public Service Companies, the present author made use of this material, note being made in the preface that this matter would be omitted from the Second Edition of the Railroad Rate Regulation when the time came. While in the nature of things there is thus a certain amount of generalization concerning rates which the author has come to regard as fundamental in much the same language in both of these works, this is the only matter which the Second Edition of this book, now devoted exclusively to Railroad Rate Regulation, has in common with the current edition of the Public Service Companies, in which the charging of proper rates is treated along with the many other obligations of public employment. It may also be remarked that the Public Service Companies is based entirely on

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