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 III OBJECTIONS TO RATE-FIXING BY A COMMISSION Having shown that Federal control of rates is necessary in order to avoid certain evils which have arisen in connection with our transportation system, let us now take up the general objections to a rigid system of public regulation, in order that we may be in a better position to devise a plan whereby many of the evils, alleged to be inherent in any system of public control, may be avoided. The difficulties and dangers of government regulation have already been so thoroughly set forth by various writers, among whom the most prominent, perhaps, is Professor H. R. Meyer, in his recent work, "Government Regulation of Railway Rates," and by numerous railway advocates such as Mr. H. T. Newcomb, in almost countless polemical tracts and articles promulgated through the public press, that more than brief mention of the various points would lead to inexcusable repetition. Moreover some of these objections have already been considered in the preceding chapter, and most of them will reappear in connection with the discussion of the court decisions, while the legal objections will appear in the final chapter proposing an alternative policy to that of giving the Commission the power to fix rates at its discretion in all cases of complaint. Therefore, those points only will be considered which we do not believe to have received sufficient notice elsewhere. The inference has been frequently drawn that once the Commission has been given power to fix rates, all intrinsic difficulties of the problem will adjust themselves. No such conclusion is warranted. As has been ably pointed out byProfessor H. R. Meyer, in the work referred to above, wherever government regulation has been tried, the difficulties have multipled rather than dimi...