These two petitions, presented by highly respectable organizations and raising questions of immediate practical importance, are representatives of a large number of similar applications which have been made to the Commission for its construction of provisions of the "Act to regulate commerce" as applied to the various points at which those provisions touch the customs of the past. They have been selected simply because they indicate the general character of all, and enable the Commission to announce certain conclusions to which it has arrived respecting its jurisdiction and its powers. It is obvious, from the tenor of such applications as these, which reach us by every mail, that the impression is generally prevalent that this Commission has power to construe, interpret, and apply the law, by preliminary judgment. We are continually appealed to for decisions in advance as to whether common carriers, said to be willing to adopt certain methods of dealing with respect to interstate commerce, can do so without subjecting themselves to the penalties denounced by the statute for violation of its provisions. A careful reading of the "Act to regulate commerce," under which this Commission is organized, will show to the petitioners and others who have made similar applications that no jurisdiction has been given us to answer questions like those under consideration. An expression of our opinion upon these subjects at this time, being neither a duty imposed nor a power conferred by the statute, would carry with it no judicial efficacy or sanction; in fact, would be no more useful to the public or the carriers than the opinion of other men upon the same points. Two sections of the law confer power upon the Commission to entertain and decide applications and petitions. Section 4 empowers us, upon application by a common carrier, to authorize such common carrier in special cases to charge less for longer than for shorter distances over the same line, and also to prescribe the extent of relief from the operation of the former part of the same section which a designated common carrier may from time to time enjoy. A number of petitions have been filed under this section, the consideration of which is at the present time engaging the attention of the Commission, and nothing said in this opinion is to be treated as in any manner bearing thereon. It is obvious that applications like those of the Railway Conductors and the Traders' and Travelers' Union have no relation whatever to the duties imposed upon us by section 4. And this is the only section of the law which the Commission has power to suspend or relax. Section 13 authorizes complaints to the Commission, and confers jurisdiction to entertain the same. It provides that any person, etc., "complaining of any thing done or omitted to be done by any common carrier subject to the provisions of this act in contravention of the provisions thereof, may apply to said Commission by petition, which shall briefly state the facts." Notice and opportunity for answer having been given, unless satisfaction is made, an investigation is required. Upon such an investigation the Commission will necessarily entertain the consideration of the question whether the conduct complained of is or is not in contravention of the provisions of the law, and if it so adjudge, it is authorized to issue a notice enjoining the carrier from further violation of the law, and to award reparation for the injury done, or both. But neither the Railway Conductors nor Traders' and Travelers' Union complain that any common carrier has violated the law. On the contrary, they both aver that the railroad companies do not now violate the law, and do not wish to do so. The conductors say that they fear they will not receive free passes as heretofore, and the traders and travelers say that they fear commercial travelers will not be allowed free transportation for 150 pounds of extra baggage, as was allowed last year. They present no complaint of any thing done or omitted in contravention of the provisions of the law. If a railroad company should issue a pass to a conductor and his family to attend the approaching convention, or should transport 300 pounds of baggage free for a commercial traveler under the registry and indemnity system, and some person, feeling aggrieved should make complaint of unjust discrimination, it would then be proper for the Commission to entertain the question of whether such conduct was or was not in violation of the law, and if so, whether it was or was not within the exceptions stated within section 22. Complaints may also be presented if the charges made by the carriers are not considered reasonable and just. But until questions of this kind come before us in the way clearly indicated by the statute, it would be worse than useless for us to express opinions or give advice. We should not only lay ourselves justly open to the charge of assuming unwarranted authority, but should also run great risk of involving all concerned in what the courts might afterwards hold to be breaches of the law by hasty and ill-considered conclusions, based upon ex parte statements and arguments. Although it might be desirable, or at least convenient, in respect to any piece of new legislation, to have a tribunal established to which inquirers might apply for instruction and advice respecting the meaning of the law and its application to be suggested "circumstances and conditions," a moment's reflection will show that no such tribunal could be properly erected. Congress has not taken the management of the railroads out of the hands of the railroad companies. It has simply established certain general principles under which interstate commerce must be conducted. It has enacted in section 1 that all charges for interstate transportation shall be reasonable and just; has prohibited in section 2 all manner of unjust discriminations; has forbidden in section 3 all undue and unreasonable preferences; has required in the same section reasonable and equal facilities for the interchange of traffic, and has prohibited in section 5 the pooling of freights. That, in substance, is the interstate commerce law. There is nothing novel in these provisions. They simply bring back the business of the common carriers to the well-settled principles of the common law. Yet no one can deny that there was urgent need of their statutory formulation. Alleged difficulties in putting them in operation only disclose examples of the extent to which they have been violated in the past. These sections of the act are expressed in plain words. A construction must be given to them in the first instance by the carriers and their patrons. When a course of conduct has been adopted of which complaint is made that it violates the law, the decision of the question will rest with the courts or with the Commission, as the complaining party may elect. This is the orderly method in which all legislation is administered and applied, and the statute in question presents no exception. One more suggestion may properly be added. It appears from the numerous petitions that have been laid before us for preliminary advice, many of them obviously upon the suggestion, if not by the procurement, of the carriers themselves, that common comment on the law by the carriers and those who have heretofore enjoyed special favors at their hands describe the system of penalties which the law provides as extreme and the risks imposed upon unintentional and unwitting violators of its provisions as enormous. Such comment seems to us neither fair nor just. It is true that section 8 provides that for violation of the law, and for failure to do an act which the law requires, the offending common carrier shall be liable to the injured party for the actual damages sustained, together with a reasonable counsel or attorney's fee, to be fixed by the court, and collected with the costs in the case. It is also true that section 10 imposes a fine of "not to exceed $5,000" upon common carriers and their officers, agents, and servants who willfully do or cause to be done, or willingly suffer or permit to be done, any prohibited act, etc., upon conviction in a district court of the United States. The civil remedy described in section 8 adds an attorney's fee to the existing common-law right of an injured party to recover the full amount of his damages, a condition of affairs which can not greatly alarm corporations disposed to fair dealings; while the criminal remedy given in section 10 obviously pertains to intentional violations of the law, and is in these cases to be graduated by the court according to the enormity of the offense. Good faith exhibited in an honest effort to carry out the requirements of the law will involve reasonable and fair-minded officials in no danger of damages or fines. The elasticity of the statute in their favor is noticeable. The unjust discrimination of section 2 must be "in a like and contemporaneous service in the transportation of a like kind of traffic under substantially similar circumstances and conditions." The preference or advantage of section 3 must be "undue or unreasonable." Throughout the act, as it now stands, in confessedly experimental form, there is exhibited an obvious and a generous purpose to allow to the corporations ample scope in the conduct of their business as common carriers for the people, and fair consideration of every reasonable claim, while insisting upon just, impartial, open, and consistent rates of charge to which every citizen shall be subject alike whose situation is the same. Surely the people could not ask for less. The language and the tenor of the act wholly fail to justify railroad managers, if any such there be, who refuse to accept responsibilities, decline to offer rates, neglect to announce conditions of traffic, embarrass the customary interchange of business and impose stagnation upon trade while they "stick in the bark" of the phrases and expressions of the law, inventing doubts and imagining dangers. It is still more unjustifiable for railroad companies to make use of the general clauses of the law, ignoring its modifying and enlarging words and formulas in order to impose additional burdens upon localities, trades, professions, manufacturers, consumers, classes of travelers, or employés, straining and repressing every construction in favor of the corporate treasury, and quoting the new law as their authority for all manner of petty exactions. The powers of the Commission are entirely adequate to cope with such conduct, the existence of which is not affirmed, although it has been somewhat publicly suggested. The same statute which enacts that charges for like service shall be uniform to all also provides that charges in every case, and for every kind and class of service, shall be reasonable and just. As the law is practically applied it is seen to contain many elements of advantage to the economical and profitable management of the business of the carriers, which they have not been slow to apprehend and take the benefit of. The Commission ventures to express the hope that with this explanation respecting the mutual functions of the carriers and the Commissioners in carrying the law into effect according to its true intent and meaning, there will be no lack of good faith and active co-operation in continuing the normal activity of every kind of reputable industry and traffic throughout the land under favorable, fair, and reasonable terms, conceding frankly to the people all the rights, benefits, advantages, and equal privileges which the "Act to regulate commerce" was intended to secure. INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION, IN THE MATTER OF THE IOWA BARB STEEL WIRE COMPANY. A petition is presented by this company which sets forth that its business is located at Marshalltown, Iowa, on several lines of railway; that the raw material for its manufacturé comes from points east of Chicago, and after the same is manufactured it is shipped southwest, west, and northwest; that before the first day of the present month petitioner had an "equalized rate" of freight, which is explained to mean that the fixed rate of freight paid by petitioner from Chicago to Marshalltown, added to the rate paid from Marshalltown to the place of consignment of its manufactured goods, equaled the rate from Chicago to such place of consignment. For example, if the rate of freight from Chicago to the Missouri River was 25 cents, and petitioner had paid 15 cents from Chicago to Marshalltown, its rate from Marshalltown to the Missouri River would be 10 cents. This is averred to be a just and equitable arrangement, which has enabled the petitioner to build up a very considerable and reasonably profitable business, to give employment to a large number of mechanics and laborers, and to that degree to furnish a home market for farming products. It has proven satisfactory to petitioner and to the railroad companies and beneficial to the city and surrounding country. It is also averred that while just to the petitioner it has not been a discrimination against any other person or locality. And the petitioner prays, on behalf of itself and other like manufacturers, that the Commission shall sanction the equalized rate, or at least suspend the operation of the new law as applied to the industry mentioned, and that railroad companies be authorized to refund to the manufacturers any excess they may have charged or collected from them before the Commission's construction or suspension has been made public. From this statement of the petition it is apparent that what is prayed for is an exceptional privilege, a privilege not granted to manufacturers in general, and which must be of very great value to the line of trade which is thus favored. No doubt what is said in the petition is true, that the described industry has prospered in consequence, and that the city where it is located has received some share of the benefit. But whether a special privilege of the sort, granted to manufacturers on a single line, but not generally, is consistent with the rule of equity and justice which the interstate commerce law undertakes to establish, is a question upon which an opinion ought to be expressed only after the most careful consideration. The consequences of an answer favorable to the petitioner might to some extent affect other interests, and give rise to complaints of discriminations; and the Commission ought clearly to see that duty requires an answer before it proceeds to give one on ex parte application. The first question, then, to challenge the attention of the Commission is whether the petition gives jurisdiction for any authoritative expression of opinion upon the facts stated. If it makes any complaint which comes under the cognizance of the Commission, or if it asks for any relief which it is in the power of the Commission to grant, it then becomes the duty of the Commission to consider the facts and apply its judgment, but if neither by complaint nor by application for relief is a case stated which will come within its jurisdiction, any expression of opinion upon the facts would be binding upon nó one and might be disregarded with impunity. The Commission has uniformly, under such circumstances, declined to express opinions when private individuals or corporations have called for them. The petitioner in this case makes no complaint of violation of law by the railroad companies; the complaint is that a privilege is not granted. But the privilege is one which, if lawful, the companies might withhold on their own view of what was dictated by their interest or their policy. On the other hand, if the privilege is one which the railroad companies can not grant voluntarily because of its coming under the condemnation of the law, neither can the Commission give authority to grant it. The Commission has not been given a general dispensing power to relieve hardship under the law, but its power in that regard is strictly and carefully limited. The law lays down a general rule of equality of right and privilege, and the Commission has no more authority to make exceptions to that rule than have any other persons except in the particular cases the law in terms provides for in section 4. The case set out in this petition is not one of the exceptional cases for which the law provides. The Commission is therefore powerless to make any order upon it. Under such circumstances it is proper and in accord with its usual practice to withhold any expression of opinion. On behalf of the Commission. T. M. COOLEY, Chairman. INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION, DEAR SIR: Your letter of the 16th instant, stating that reduced rates have heretofore been given by railroad companies for the transportation of fish and fish eggs, transported under the authority of your Commission from one part of the country to another, and inquiring whether such rates may be continued under" the act to regulate commerce," has been received and considered by the Commission. As the "United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries" is one of the agencies of the Government, and the distribution of fish and fish eggs is by authority of the Government, it would seem clear that such transportation falls under the exception in the twenty-second section of the act, which provides "that nothing contained in this act shall apply to the carriage, storage, or handling of property free or at reduced rates for the United States," etc. An answer given by this Commission to a similar inquiry from the Interior Department may be referred to here as an expression of the views of this Commission: The Commission directs me to say to you that it does not understand it has any general power to construe the statute under which it is organized for the purpose of guiding or controlling the actions of individuals in either private business or public duties, except when complaints under the law are brought to its attention, or when relief which it is in its power to grant is prayed. The Commission has therefore uniformly declined to express opinions on abstract questions of construction or requests of private citizens or organizations, deeming it alike proper and prudent to do so. Deference to a Department of the Government incline the Commission to make an exception of your request, especially as a doubt regarding the rights of the Government might seriously affect the bids for transportation which are to be called for. Coming to the questions, then, I am further directed to say that in its view the statement made by you of the facts constitutes of itself a complete answer. plies, as you show, are delivered to the Government at points designated, and they The sup |