Take the Kansas oil rate for example. The railroads at the dictation of the Combine raised the rate, as we have seen, from 10 to 17 cents. Suppose the Commission had ordered the roads to cease charging 17 cents, that being found to be unreasonable. The railroads could appeal and appeal, and if after several years the case went against them they could make a rate of 16½ cents. Then a new investigation could be begun, the Commission could make a new order, and after years in the courts the rate might come down another half cent perhaps. And so on; even if all the decisions went against the railroads it would take 105 years to reduce the rate to 10 cents again, calculating on the basis of the average period of 7½ years required for final litigation. Why not sum up the process in a single order for the 10 cent rate and if objected to by the railroads have one judicial contest and finish the business. By the indirect method of declaring one rate after another to be unreasonable the Commission has now the power at last to fix the rate. The proposition to allow it to name a reasonable rate is only putting in direct, brief, effective form the power it now has in indirect, diffused, and ineffective form. The railroads might not act in the way described, but the point is that they could do so; there is no power in the law as it stands to-day to compel them to adopt a reasonable rate within a reasonable time. Again, consider the predicament Commissioner Prouty presents.[405] If the Commission, considering all the circumstances including railroad competition, finds that the rates from certain points to W should not be higher than the rates to O and orders the railroads to discontinue the discrimination between the two cities, the court will sustain the order and grant an injunction to enforce it. But if the Commission finds that there should be some difference between the rates to the two places, though not so much difference as there is, and it orders the rates to W down so that they will be fair, the courts will annul the order because the Commission has no power to fix rates in the opinion of the Supreme Court.