"Railway construction continues to increase in the United States with immense rapidity. Concurrent with this increase, and notwithstanding all the efforts that have been made at restraint, the aggressions upon political and industrial rights increase also. Nor is it likely that without more rigorous control than is now exercised these aggressions will be any less active than they are to-day. It is coming to be pretty generally realized that the Interstate Commerce legislation has not fulfilled the expectation of its friends. But this is a frequent trait of tentative legislation. It is not reasonable to expect that the first efforts to solve a problem the factors of which are so hidden and complex will be followed by complete success." Concerning the changes needed to make Government regulation in the United States more effective, he says: "A reform which would deal with an elaborate system of evil cannot, therefore, be confined to treating consequences, the separate instances of the system. There must be a power which can go behind these and grapple with causes. There must, therefore, be something more than a court. There must be a commission, a department of government which will provide organized supervision and inspection against which the quasi-public corporation can claim no privacy as inviolable. Such a department must be clothed with the power to ascertain precisely where and how the evils of the present methods originate, and when these are ascertained it must be able to apply the remedy at the source of evil. The remedial force must be of a preventive kind." A few grave misstatements of historical facts greatly mar Mr. Bonham's book. He makes, for instance, the following statement: "Following this came restrictive legislation, which, in some instances, was so unreasonable as to make any railway management impossible. Some of the Granger legislation, and especially that of Iowa, was of this character, as were also some of the earlier efforts to secure Congressional legislation."