Washington Debates Making the Railroad Commission Permanent
Debating the power of the state to regulate railroad monopolies in Washington.
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It is difficult to understand the motives of the protest so positively urged in the convention at Olympia against the railroad commission. In the elaborate system outlined in the committee report, there is indeed legitimate room for objection, since it involves details which it may be desirable to modify from time to time as conditions change, going to the extent of usurping the functions of the legislature. But as to the principle involved in the creation of a commission as a permanent feature of our state government there ought to be no objection. Every state which has attained anything like positive success in the regulation of railroads now employs a commission as the immediate means of applying and exercising its own eminent authority. There is in fact no other practicable way.
“The railroad commission has come to be recognized in the United States as a necessary feature of any state government which attempts to exercise its rights in the general control of railroads.”
The late-19th-century struggle to establish a state railroad commission echoes today's debates over how much power regional agencies should have to regulate modern utilities and corporate monopolies in an increasingly complex economy.
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