The Mann-Elkins Act was part of the Progressive Era effort to regulate destructive competition and unfair trade practices. In the spirit of PROGRESSiviSM, President Theodore RooSEVELT had promised a Square Deal for ordinary Americans in his presidential election campaign of 1904. Previously, he had shown his willingness to rein in corporate abuses of power when he used his executive power to intervene in the Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902. The threat of sending federal troops resulted in a compromise between the United Mine Workers of America and the mine owners, which gave the workers a wage increase and nine-hour day but did not demand recognition of the union. While the government had a practice of acting primarily on behalf of employers in industrial disputes, the Roosevelt administration’s threat to seize the mines and continue coal production signaled a major shift in the role of the federal government as an impartial arbitrator. It also marked a change in government regulation of the railroad industry, which owned most of the anthracite mines.
The history of railroad regulation was an inconsistent one. By the 20th century, a series of legislative acts, passed to regulate railroads, were largely unenforceable. Yet the legislation demonstrated the enlarged federal power to regulate corporations. In 1887 Congress had passed the Interstate Commerce Act, which established the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to regulate railroads, but the ICC’s powers had been constrained by the courts over the years. In 1903 Roosevelt pushed the Elkins Act through Congress, which prohibited discriminatory railroad rebates. In 1906 Congress passed the Hepburn Act, which empowered the ICC to set maximum rates once a shipper filed a complaint.
Roosevelt’s successor, William Howard Taet, worked to attain the previous administration’s unfulfilled goals, in particular, railroad regulation. Taft signed the Mann-Elkins Act of 1910, which strengthened the regulatory power of the ICC. Extending the ICC’s power over railroads, the act gave the ICC the authority to suspend rate increases without waiting for complaints from shippers. It set up the Commerce Court to hasten the settlement of railroad rate cases. In addition, the act placed telegraph, cable, and telephone companies under ICC control.
Railroad regulation had enlarged federal power over the industry. Ultimately, however, the ICC’s record of enforcement remained unsatisfactory. By 1910, the railroads’ voluntary efforts, not federal regulation, had curbed unfair rate-setting practices—the companies agreeing among themselves to set uniformly higher rates.
Although Taft supported regulatory legislation that Roosevelt had been unable to pass through Congress, Taft thought that Roosevelt had abused executive power. Because he refrained from using the tactics of Roosevelt and had a hands-off style of leadership, Taft was viewed as a less effective president. Despite the public perception of a weakened administration in the White House, Taft managed to pass the Mann-Elkins Act, a law that increased the power of the federal government to regulate the railroad industry.
Further reading: Lewis J. Gould, Reform and Regulation: American Politics from Roosevelt to Wilson, 2d ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986); Albro Martin, Enterprise Denied: Origins of the Decline of American Railroads, 1897-1917 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971).
—Glen Bessemer
World History
