Excerpt from The Government and the Railroads With the enactment of the Hepburn Bill, during President Roosevelt's second administration, began the modern era of railroad regulation and rate control by commissions. It was a measure of radical inno vation and far - reaching importance, and it ought to have been given a fair test in practical operation for a sufficient length of time. Instead, President Taft, in 1909, felt called upon to propose a new and drastic measure of railroad legislation. He embodied his recommendations on the subject in a bill which was duly introduced in Congress. It was far from being a perfect piece of legislation. The odor of politics was not absent from it. It was considered by the railroads, and in business circles generally, as um called for, unwise, and as unduly burdensome and restrictive in various important respects. But at least it was a consistent and carefully matured meas ure. It was the formal and official expression of the views of the Taft Administration, the second import ant measure put forward by it. It offered the first real test of the capacity for leadership and fighting edge of the President and his Cabinet, and they failed in it lamentably. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.