A few examples of modern rate regulation may be given. In 1896 South Carolina fixed a flat passenger rate of three and one-quarter cents per mile. Both South Carolina and Virginia have empowered the railway or public service commission to fix all rates, including telephone and telegraph. Passenger rates are now usually fixed at two cents per mile in the East, or at two and one-half cents in the South or West. In 1907 Kansas and Nebraska arbitrarily reduced all freight rates fifteen per cent. on the price then charged. In 1907 there was some evidence of reaction; Alabama, in an extra session, repealed her law enacted the same year prescribing maximum freight rates, substituting more moderate rates in seven "groups" (which, however, may be changed by the railway commission!), and also enacted a statute directing the commission and the attorney-general not to enforce the earlier law; while the heavily penal Minnesota law was declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court. In the British empire the power to fix rates is, of course, unquestioned; and they are, as to railways at least, generally regulated by law. Canada in 1903 established a railroad commission, and Nova Scotia in 1908 imposed various restrictions as to tolls, still the English word for rates. So in Ontario and Quebec in 1906, and in Tasmania in 1901. In many States, such as Victoria, the railways are owned by the state, in which case, of course, no question as to the right to fix rates can arise. IX TRUSTS AND MONOPOLIES