PART I. RAILROAD HISTORY BEFORE 1878. THE railroad question as it has worked itself out in the Eastern States is quite a different problem from that which has occupied the attention of Western legislators. The Eastern States were founded and developed industrially without any material aid from railroad facilities. The railroad was introduced into a society already well advanced, and fairly capable of handling the new problems as they arose. In the West, on the other hand, the building of railroads in a large measure preceded the economic development of the country, and was to a considerable extent responsible for it. A study of the early history of the Western States, strictly so called, reveals but few experiments with canals, and but little legislation concerning highway building and improvement. Railroad Acts were among the first discussed by Western legislatures. Iowa's experience with railroads has been taken for consideration because, in the first place, Iowa was the centre of the Granger movement, and a study of its history reveals the steps by which the questions of railroad management were most bitterly and most thoroughly fought out and settled; because, in the second place, Iowa has experimented so frequently in the field of rail 19 road control that its history includes nearly every phase of the question; in the third place, because the Iowa Commission has been one of the best managed and most successful in the country. If it has accomplished its purpose, it will furnish a model for States similarly circumstanced. If, on the other hand, this body has not succeeded in working out its ends, we shall have some ground for concluding that the solution of the problem is not to be sought along these lines. The history of Iowa's efforts in the direction of railroad control is coextensive with the history of the Commonwealth. At the first session of the General Assembly of the State of Iowa, an incorporation law was passed providing for the building of railroads. Congress was memorialized for grants of land to aid construction, and that body responded with the Iowa Land Bill, approved May 15, 1856. Corporations were organized to take advantage of the liberal policy of the government, yet for many years railroad building progressed but slowly. The building of the Union Pacific furnished the necessary incentive, for every Iowa road wanted the first Western connection. In 1870 we find the State crossed from east to west by four great trunk lines. The northernmost of these, built by the Dubuque and Sioux City Railroad Company, reached Sioux City soon after 1870, and was leased to the Illinois Central. The Iowa Central Air Line, along the 42d parallel, pushed into Council Bluffs in the fall of 1867. It was operated at this time and thereafter by the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad Company. To the south of this was the line of the |