During the last fifty years the railroad has perhaps been most familiar to the American people as a "problem." As a problem it has figured constantly in politics and has held an important position in many political campaigns. The details that comprise this problem have been indicated to some extent in the preceding pages--the speculative character of much railroad building, the rascality of some railroad promoters, the corrupting influence which the railroad has too frequently exerted in legislatures and even in the courts. The attempts to subject this new "monster" to government regulation and control have furnished many of the liveliest legislative and judicial battles in American history. Farmers, merchants, manufacturers, and the traveling public have all had their troubles with the transportation lines, and the difficulties to which these struggles have given rise have produced that problem which is even now apparently far from solution. Railroads had been operating for many years in this country before it dawned upon the farmers that this great improvement, which many had hailed as his greatest friend, might be his greatest enemy. It had been operating for several decades in the manufacturing sections before the enterprising industrialist discovered that the railroad might not only build up his business but also destroy it. From these discoveries arose all those discordant cries of "extortion," "rebate," "competition," "long haul and short haul," "regulation," and "government ownership," which have given railroad literature a vocabulary all its own and have written new chapters in the science of economics. The storm center of all this agitation concerned primarily one thing--the amount which the railroad might fairly charge for transporting passengers and freight. The battle of the people with the railroads for fifty years has been the "battle of the rate." This has taken mainly two forms, the agrarian agitation of the West against transportation charges, and the fight of the manufacturing centers, mainly in the East, against discriminations. Perhaps its most characteristic episodes have been the fight of the "Grangers" and their successors against the trunk lines and that of the general public against the Standard Oil Company.