Meantime an equally important contribution to the solution of the railroad question was being worked out in another quarter. In the year 1869 the Massachusetts Railroad Commission was established. Its powers were so slight that it was not regarded as likely to be an influential public agency. Fortunately it numbered among its members Charles Francis Adams, Jr.; a man whose efficiency more than made up for any want of nominal powers. In his hands the mere power to report became the most effective of all weapons. Representing at once enlightened public judgment and far-sighted railroad policy, he did much to bring the two into harmony and protect the legitimate interests on both sides from short-sighted misuse for the benefit of either party. The detail of his work is matter of past history; perhaps its most prominent result was to introduce to State legislation the idea of a railroad commission as an administrative body. Those States which had no stringent laws appointed commissions to take their place; those which had overstringent ones appointed commissions to use discretion in applying them. In either case, the existence of a body of men representing the State, but possessing the technical knowledge to see what the exigencies of railroad business demanded, was a protection to all parties concerned. [Illustration: Charles Francis Adams.] But matters were rapidly passing beyond the sphere of State legislation. Each new consolidation of systems, each additional development of through traffic, made it more impossible to control railroad policy by the action of individual States. It could only be done by a development of the law in the United States courts or by Congressional legislation. The former result was necessarily slow; each year showed an increased demand for special action on the part of Congress. But such action was hindered by divergence of opinion in that body itself. One set of men wished a moderate law, prohibiting the most serious abuses of railroad power, and enforced under the discretionary care of a commission. These men were for the most part not unwilling to see pools legalized if their members could thereby be held to a fuller measure of responsibility. On the other hand, the extremists wished to prescribe a system of equal mileage rates; they would hear of no such thing as a commission, and hated pools as an invention of the adversary. Between the two lay a large body of members who had no convictions on the matter, but were desirous to please everybody and offend nobody--a hard task in this particular case. It was nearly nine years from the time Mr. Reagan introduced his first bill when a compromise was finally effected--largely by the influence of Senator Cullom. As compromises go, it was a tolerably fair one. The extremists sacrificed their opposition to a commission, but secured the prohibition of pools; the disputed points with regard to rates were left in such a shape that no man knew what the law meant, and each