Reference was made to the English Railway Commission of 1873 and to the Massachusetts Commission of 1869, and the Wisconsin experiment of 1874 was held up as something to avoid. The reply to this kind of objection was that the power to control rates must be lodged somewhere, and that the legislature was inexpert, slow to act, and subject to corrupt influences. Other Constitutional Provisions The second decision of the convention was that a general prohibition of discrimination should be placed in the fundamental law. The clauses finally adopted provided that no discrimination in charges or facilities for transportation should be made by any railroad or other transportation company between places or persons, or in the facilities for the transportation of the same classes of freight or passengers within the state, or coming from or going to any other state. In addition to this general prohibition, it was enacted that persons and property transported over any railroad, or by any other transportation company or individual, should be delivered at any station at charges not exceeding the charges for the transportation of persons and property of the same class, in the same direction, to any more distant station. This amounted to a stringent prohibition of greater charges for shorter than for longer hauls. Speakers opposed to the discriminative clauses insisted that only unjust discrimination, not all discrimination, should be prohibited, and pointed out that the proposed law was unconstitutional in that it applied to commerce between the states. Neither objection was sufficient to persuade the convention that the proposals should not be approved. Besides the fundamental clauses relating to a commission and those prohibiting and defining discrimination, the Constitutional Convention of 1879 forbade railroads to grant passes to persons holding any office of honor, trust, or profit in the state; forbade them also to agree to divide earnings with owners of vessels entering or leaving the state, or, under certain conditions, with other common carriers; granted to all railroads the right to connect with, intersect, or cross other railroads; and provided that no officer or employee of any railroad or canal company should be interested in the furnishing of material or supplies to such company. One apparently important clause declared that a railroad which should lower its rates of fare or freight for the purpose of competing with any other common carrier, should not again raise these rates without the consent of the governmental authority in which should be vested the power to regulate fares and freights. Act of 1880