The Commission says that as a rule it cannot get the facts. In some cases it has succeeded, but usually it is thwarted in respect to personal discriminations (to which President Tuttle’s argument chiefly applies) because they are secret, and neither railroad men nor the favored shippers will ordinarily tell the truth about them, and railroad books do not commonly contain any record of them.[399] Where the Commission has obtained evidence of unlawful discrimination it has turned the facts over to the Department of Justice, which has not prosecuted promptly, in many cases not at all, and has sometimes prevented prosecutions which United States district attorneys were ready to begin. There seems to be good reason to believe it is true that existing laws have not been fully enforced; that in addition to the difficulty, perhaps impossibility, of getting at the facts in many cases, wrongdoers have escaped punishment even where the facts were fully known; and that a commission to investigate the Department of Justice, and try the effect of publicity there, may be as essential as a commission to investigate the railroads. Some criticism seems to attach also to the Interstate Commission, as it does not appear that they have asked the Department of Justice to prosecute senators and congressmen, legislators, judges, etc., well known to be riding on passes, nor to punish the railroads for giving them. As long as express companies and water carriers are not within the Interstate Act, and doubt exists as to private cars and terminal railroads, there is room for further legislation. And in respect to excessive rates and tariff discriminations between places and commodities, though the facts can be easily ascertained, the remedy is regarded by the Commission as wholly inadequate under existing laws, because of the emasculation of the long and short haul clause by the interpretation given it by the Supreme Court, and because the railroads are able, whenever they choose, to delay the enforcement of an order for years by litigation, conceding at last perhaps only a small part of what they should concede and so requiring further years of contest to approach another step toward justice. So the Commission asks for power to fix a reasonable rate in place of one found unreasonable, and to put the new rate into effect at once subject to subsequent revision on appeal by the carrier.