The railways are public highways, they exercise governmental powers and fulfil governmental functions, and it is an atrocious misuse of social power to employ these so as to give special advantages to a few members of the community. The Interstate Commission says: “The railroad is justly regarded as a public facility which every person may enjoy at pleasure, a common right to which all are admitted and from which none can be excluded. The essence of this right is equality, and its enjoyment can be complete only when it is secured on like conditions by all who desire its benefits. The railroad exists by virtue of authority proceeding from the State, and thus differs in its essential nature from every form of private enterprise. The carrier is invested with extraordinary powers which are delegated by the sovereign, and thereby performs a governmental function. The favoritism, partiality, and exactions which the law was designed to prevent resulted in large measure from a general misapprehension of the nature of transportation, and its vital relation to commercial and industrial progress. So far from being a private possession, it differs from every species of property, and is in no sense a commodity. Its office is peculiar, for it is essentially public. The railroad, therefore, can rightfully do nothing which the State itself might not do if it performed this public service through its own agents, instead of delegating it to corporations which it has created. The large shipper is entitled to no advantage over his smaller rival in respect to rates or accommodations, for the compensation exacted in every case should be measured by the same standard. To allow any exceptions to this fundamental rule is to subvert the principle upon which free institutions depend, and substitute arbitrary caprice for equality of right.”[348] The losses to the railroads cannot be estimated accurately, but we have some interesting hints. Franklin B. Gowan said in 1888: “The gross receipts of the railroads of this country, in round numbers, are eight hundred millions of dollars per annum, and I verily and honestly believe that one hundred millions of dollars annually are taken out of the pockets of the people of this country by unjust railway discrimination, and turned over to this privileged class—and this is equal to a tax of two dollars per head paid by the people for the sake of building up the new aristocracy of wealth that in this free country arrogate to themselves the position of the nobility of the older countries. It is utterly impossible that there can be any success attending a monopoly of natural products without the aid of the unjust discrimination of railroad companies. And only when such discrimination ceases will all people be placed on terms of equality.”