"By the percentage of wages," says the report of Congress, "by false measurements, by rents, stores, and other methods, the workman is virtually a chattel of the operator." It says, to summarize: "The carrier drives out both operator and owner, obtains the property, works the mine, 'disciplines' the miner, lowers wages by the importation of Huns and Italians, restricts the output, and advances the price of coal to the public. It is enabled to commit such wrongs upon individuals and the public by virtue of exercising absolute control of a public highway."[22] The people of Pennsylvania, in 1873, adopted a new Constitution. To put an end to the consolidation of all the anthracite coal lands into the hands of the railroads, this Constitution forbade common carriers to mine or manufacture articles for transportation over their lines, or to buy land except for carrying purposes. These provisions of the Constitution have been disobeyed "defiantly." "The railroads have defiantly gone on acquiring title to hundreds of thousands of acres of coal, as well as of neighboring agricultural lands." They have been "aggressively pursuing the joint business of carrying and mining coal." So far from quitting it, they "have increased their mining operations by extracting bituminous as well as anthracite."[23] Instead of enacting "appropriate legislation," as commanded by the new Constitution, to effectuate its prohibitions, the Legislature has passed laws to nullify the Constitution by preventing forever any escheat to the State of the immense area of lands unlawfully held by the railroads. Every effort breaking down to meet the evil by State action, failure was finally confessed by the passage in 1878, by the Pennsylvania Legislature, of a joint resolution asking Congress to legislate "for equity in the rates of freight." In 1887 Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Law, and established the Interstate Commerce Commission to enforce justice on the railway highways. The independent mine-owners of Pennsylvania appealed to it. Two years and a half were consumed in the proceedings. The Commission decided that the rates the railroad charged were unjust and unreasonable, and ordered them reduced.[24] But the decision has remained unenforced, and cannot be enforced. The railroads treat the Commission with the same contumely they visit on the Constitution of Pennsylvania, and two years after the decision Congress in 1893 found their rates to be 50 cents a ton higher than what the Commission had declared to be just and equitable.[25] The Interstate Commerce Law provides for the imprisonment in the penitentiary of those guilty of the crimes it covers. But the only conviction had under it has been of a shipper for discriminating against a railroad. CHAPTER III PROHIBITION THAT PROHIBITS