Businessmen and the Political Economy: The Railroad Rate Controversy of 1905

Abstract

A T A Denver Chamber of Commerce dinner in May 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt announced that pending railroad legislation should include the policy of extending powers of Interstate Commerce Commission, of giving them power to fix rates and to have rates that they fix go into effect practically immediately.' At nearly same time, James J. Hill, president of Great Northern Railway system and customarily a supporter of Republican party, stated flatly: I can not imagine a greater misfortune than to attempt to fix [future] rates by law . . . to give any power to a commission . . . to fix future rates . . . would arrest progress of commerce of whole country.' Meanwhile, before a Senate committee, fruit growers from California and lumber manufacturers from Mississippi testified heatedly in support of such legislation, while Pittsburgh coal merchants and Pacific coast lumber manufacturers spoke sharply against any legislation of that sort. In Congress, railroad rate issue teamed midwestern Republican senators with southern Democrats in a bitter fight against eastern Republicans. About a political situation as complex as this appears to have been, it is not accurate to label resulting legislation-the Hepburn Act-simply as a progressive reform, nor for that matter, exclusively as a conservative triumph. Revisionist interpretations of Progressive era have sought, with limited success, to explain role of businessmen in major legislative achievements between 1900 and 1917. Gabriel Kolko, Robert Wiebe, and James Weinstein have written accounts in which business interests appear as moving force behind legislation that had traditionally been viewed as work of well-intentioned progressive