1 gen 1887 anni - Intesrstate Commerce Act

Descrizione:

The Interstate Commerce Act counteracted a Supreme Court decision of the previous year, Wabash v. Illinois (1886), that had struck down states’ authority to regulate railroads. The act created the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), (Formed in 1887 to oversee the railroad industry and prevent unfair rates, the ICC was an important early effort by Congress to regulate corporate practices. )charged with investigating interstate shipping, forcing railroads to make their rates public, and suing in court when necessary to make companies reduce “unjust or unreasonable” rates.

Though creation of the ICC was a direct response to farmer-labor demands, its final form represented a compromise. Radical leaders wanted Congress to establish a direct set of rules under which railroads must operate. If a railroad did not comply, any citizen could take the company to court; if the new rules triggered bankruptcy, the railroad could convert to public ownership. But getting such a plan through Congress proved impossible. Business-friendly lawmakers called instead for an expert commission to oversee the railroad industry. In a pattern repeated frequently over the next few decades, the commission model proved more acceptable to the majority of congressmen than grassroots legal action with pressure toward public ownership. As had happened with the construction of transcontinental railroads — not publicly owned, as in Europe — policymakers’ decision to support for-profit enterprise profoundly shaped the nation’s political economy.

The ICC faced formidable challenges. Though the new law prohibited railroads from reaching secret rate-setting agreements, evidence was difficult to gather and secret “pooling” continued. A hostile Supreme Court also undermined the commission’s powers. In a series of sixteen decisions over two decades after the ICC was created, the Court sided with railroads fifteen times. The justices delivered a particularly hard blow in 1897 when they ruled that the ICC had no power to interfere with shipping rates. Nonetheless, the ICC’s existence was a major achievement. In the early twentieth century, Congress would strengthen the commission’s powers, and the ICC would become one of the most powerful federal agencies charged with overseeing private business.

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