Railway Regulation

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II The Problem Of Regulation Historic Foundations For Governmental Control American railways are privately owned and privately operated. The problem of government regulation is the problem of harmonizing with the interests of the general public the private interests of those who appear as the legal...
More Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II The Problem Of Regulation Historic Foundations For Governmental Control American railways are privately owned and privately operated. The problem of government regulation is the problem of harmonizing with the interests of the general public the private interests of those who appear as the legal owners and managers of the railways. That the public interest is vitally involved in enforcing reasonable rates, adequate service, and equality of treatment in the administration of railway enterprise appears from the magnitude and importance of the railway industry?from the extent of the physical properties of American railways, and from the economic significance as well as the social and political importance of the service which they render. But the nature of American railway development presents further grounds for an intimate public concern in the methods and policies of private management of railway enterprise. The growth of our railway net has been exceedingly rapid. The American transportation system, comprising 250,000 miles of line, is the result of less than a century of development. The early railway ventures were necessarily speculative in their nature, and even when the efficiency of the railway as an instrument of modern commerce and industry had been established, railway construction still proceeded in advance of actual needs. As a result, the American people secured their railways early and in great abundance, but they paid the price of much speculative promotion and fraudulent financiering. The foundation for not a few of this country's large fortunes was laid in the manipulations which marked the early history of American railways. Some of the practices of the early days of railway promotion and railway construction have become notorious. We shall ...