guided by an existing state of facts fined, to be sure, but still ascertainabl less precision-and makes no attem mental determination of rate reason

Before Congress grants to the In merce Commission, or to any admin the power to fix rates, the question ou oughly considered whether the princ such fixing is to be based are sufficie permit of the application of them by administrative officers, whether subj review or not, without grave dange teresting illustration of the kind of di contemplated was furnished the other ney General Moody in his annual re gestion which was approved by Presi in his message to Congress. This s that if the power of fixing a maxin conferred upon the Commission, th have in its hands a weapon which powerful in the suppression of rebate ney General stated that the Commis his opinion, not be exceeding the would then have, if it adopted the p the net rate that it found to be given

shipper and established it as the maximum rate permissible. Now, this policy would in itself probably be a most excellent one; but is it not evident that so fundamental a point should be settled by legislation, and not by the arbitrary act of an administrative board? It is certainly not self-evident that the rate given to a favored shipper is the maximum reasonable rate; indeed, Mr. Moody himself rests his recommendation not upon this assumption, but upon the salutary preventive effect that he thinks the policy would have. If the lawmakers of the country direct the Commission to embody this rule-a rule not for the scientific determination of a reasonable rate, but for the exemplary punishment of a railroad company guilty of favoritism— well and good; but surely it is contrary to all principles of responsible government that an ad ministrative body should have the power of instituting any such rule.

This, however, is only a curious reminder, in a single sharply defined matter, of a difficulty which is present all along the line when we consider the question of rate-fixing. What are the principles upon which it is to be done? Are they sufficiently evident to make the actual performance of that act a merely administrative duty? If not, is Congress prepared to lay down a set of principles roughly or approximately adequate to the guidance of the administrators? Or are Congress and the people willing, for the sake of making a beginning of some kind, to entrust powers of a non-administrative and non-judicial kind-powers involving the discretionary adjustment of great material interests where no definite

principles exist for general guidance—to an administrative body, whether subject to judicial review or not? These are questions which lie at the threshhold of the railroad-rate inquiry, and which it would not be fitting that intelligent public opinion should ignore.

CARL SCHURZ

(May 14, 1906)

With the death of Carl Schurz there passes away one of the few remaining figures signally associated with the events connected with the great Civil War. His departure from the scene makes an even more striking severance of ties with the past in that it takes away one of the rapidly dwindling number of men who formed part of the revolutionary movement which stirred all Europe in 1848. According to the usual method of reckoning these things, it may be said that two generations have made their entrance upon and their exit from the stage since the time when young Schurz enlisted in the German revolutionary uprising. The nearly three-score years that have passed since then have been years of vast and profound changes, material, intellectual and spiritual. Not the least of these changes is that which has affected the subject-matter of political thought, and the attitude of the world toward political issues. The grapple with the complex problems of economic adjustment has crowded away from the front of the stage those simpler and more ideal strivings which then engaged the thoughts and filled the souls of high-minded men, young and old. Carl Schurz grew up with a firm belief in and an enthusiastic devotion to those principles of human rights and of constitutional liberty which formed the common creed of European liberals and which found their chief embodiment in the doctrines that lay at

ultimate extinction, should have enlis interest of the young liberal. His rema in argument and oratory soon made prominent figures in that party; and share in the political campaigns prece War and served in the Union Army t struggle.

After the war, he made his mark fi ism and then as one of the foremost m United States Senate. Nothing was able about his course in that body thar with which he perceived the dangers i arbitrary exercise of executive power struction days. The unfaltering firmn he took his stand against his own p matter was only one manifestation of devotion to principle which character from its beginning in the German close, when he stood out as one of th testants against the new policy of im the magnificent power which he pu speech in the Senate in which he dend Sheridan's invasion of the Louisia marked perhaps the highest point of achievements. His retirement from