So well did the bill which was finally adopted by the committee reflect the general sentiment of the members of the General Assembly that not a single vote was cast against it in either house upon its final passage. Since the adjustment of business under this law, there has been less friction between the people and the railroads than before for thirty years, and so satisfactory has it proved to all that no one, not even a railroad man, has to this day asked the legislature to repeal the law or any part of it. The act contains no new principle of railroad control. By far the greater part of its provisions were taken from the old law. Nearly every one of its features may be found either in the Interstate Commerce Act or upon the statute books of other States. It provides that charges must be reasonable and just, that no undue preference or advantage shall be given to any railroad patron, and that equal facilities for interchange of traffic shall be given to all roads; it prohibits pooling, a greater charge for a shorter than longer haul, the shorter or any portion of it being included in the longer, and discrimination against any shipping point. It requires that schedules of rates and fares shall be printed and kept for public inspection, and that no advance shall be made in rates or fares once established except after ten days' public notice; and it empowers the Board of Railroad Commissioners to make and revise schedules for railroads, the rates contained in such schedules to be received and held in all suits as _prima facie_ reasonable maximum rates. The act further provides penalties and means of enforcement. It must not be supposed that by the passage of this act the legislature disclaimed the right to fix absolute rates; it simply chose this expedient because in the present tentative stage of rate regulation it seemed most efficient. There has been much misunderstanding concerning the Iowa law. Many suppose that the Iowa commissioners have power to make confiscatory rates for the railroads, while in fact they can only name maximum rates which shall be deemed and taken in all courts of the State as _prima facie_ evidence that they are reasonable and just maximum rates until the railroads show that they are not. They are at liberty to go into court any day and show this, if they are able. They are, however, careful not to undertake it, for no one knows better than they do that the rates fixed by the commissioners are liberal for the railroads. There are nine States, besides Iowa, in which the power to fix rates has been conferred upon railroad commissioners. This feature of the law was therefore far from being a novel one, yet no provision of the act was, previous to its passage, so furiously opposed, or subsequent to it so stubbornly resisted as this. Railroad managers realized that a surrender of the right to make their own rates was virtually a surrender of the power to practice abuses.