Railroads and Regulation, 1877–1916: Conspiracy or Public Interest?

Professor Gabriel Kolko in his recent work, Railroads and Regulation, 1877–1916, presents an interpretation or the origin, motivation, and consequences of the movement for federal regulation of railroads which differs in important respects from that which has hitherto been generally accepted. Thus it has generally been held that railway regulation was a response to the demands of farmers and other shippers for protection against monopolistic and discriminatory tactics on the part of the railroads and that regulation was bitterly resisted by the latter. Kolko, on the other hand, holds that regulation was actually welcomed by the railroads as a means of securing the rate and profit stability which they were unable to maintain by their own action, and that “the railroads, not the farmers and shippers, were the most important single advocates of federal regulation from 1877 to 1916” (p. 3). He concedes that “the movement for federal regulation of the railroad system was not, in any strict sense, deliberately initiated by the railroads’ (p. 20) and that legislation could not have been passed without shipper support, but points out that shippers were either inarticulate or divided with respect to the kind of regulation, if any, desired, and that the railroads were always able to secure the support of enough shipper groups to insure passage of the legislation which they favored. Furthermore, the railroads welcomed federal as opposed to state regulation, since they regarded the latter as punitive and restrictive and less amenable to their influence than federal regulation.