was, for the time being, able to interpret it to suit the wishes of his Congressional district. The immediate effects of the law were extremely good. There were certain sections of it, like those which secured publicity of rates and equal treatment for different persons in the same circumstances, whose wisdom was universally admitted. Indeed it was rather a disgrace, both to the railroad agents and to the courts, that we had to wait for an act of Congress to secure these ends; and most of the railroads made up for past remissness in this respect by quite a spasm of virtue. In some instances it was even thought that they "stood up so straight as to lean over backward." But this was not the only part of the law which proved efficient. The very vagueness of the clause concerning the relative rates for through and local traffic, which under other circumstances might have proved fatal, put a most salutary power into the hands of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and one which they were not slow to use. [Illustration: Thomas M. Cooley.] The President was fortunate in his selection of commissioners; above all in the chairman, Judge T. M. Cooley, of Michigan, a man whose character, knowledge of public law, and technical familiarity with railroad business made him singularly well fitted for the place. The work of the Interstate Commission, like that of its Massachusetts prototype, shows how much more important is personal power than mere technical authority. It was supposed at first that the commission would be a purely administrative body, with discretion to suspend the law. Instead of this, they have enforced and interpreted it; and in the process of interpretation have virtually created a body of additional law, which is read and quoted as authority. With but little ground for expecting it from the letter of the act, they have become a judicial body of the highest importance. Their existence seems to furnish a possibility for an elastic development of transportation law, neither so weak as to be ineffective nor so strong as to break by its own rigidity.