The significance of Smyth _v._ Ames was soon observable in the activities of the lower Federal courts. Within the nine months of 1898 that followed that decision, there were at least four applications for injunctions against alleged unreasonable rates, and in three of these cases the applications were granted. During the years that followed Smyth _v._ Ames, Federal courts all over the country were tying the hands of state officers who attempted to put into effect legislative measures regulating railway concerns. In Arkansas, Florida, Alabama, Minnesota, Missouri, Illinois, North Carolina, Louisiana, and Oregon, rates fixed by statute, commission, or ordinance were attacked by the railways in the Federal courts and their enforcement blocked. In several instances the injunctions of the lower courts were made permanent, and no appeal was taken to the Supreme Court of the United States. With Smyth _v._ Ames staring them in the face, state attorneys accepted the inevitable. The decision in Smyth _v._ Ames left still one matter in doubt. The allegation of the railroads in that case had been that the rates fixed were actually confiscatory--that is, so low as to make dividends impossible. In the course of his opinion, Justice Harlan had stated, however, that the railroads were entitled to a "fair return," an opinion that had been expressed also in the Reagan case, where indeed it had been necessary to the decision, and still earlier, but with little relevancy, in the Chicago-Minnesota case. In none of these cases, however, had any precise definition of the terms "reasonable" or "fair" return been necessary, and none had been made. The first direct suggestion of the development of the judicial reasoning on this point that was to take place is found in the Milwaukee Electric Railway case, also decided in 1898. In that case Judge Seaman, of the Federal circuit court, found from the evidence that the dividends of the street railway company for several years past had been from 3.3 to 4.5 per cent, while its bonds bore interest at 5 per cent. Anything less than these returns, the judge declared, would be unreasonable, inasmuch as money loaned on real estate, secured by a first mortgage, was at that time commanding 6 per cent in Milwaukee.