The President and Fellows of Harvard College
A History of the ICC: From Panacea to Palliative by Ari Hoogenboom; Olive Hoogenboom
Review by: Lewis L. Gould
The Business History Review, Vol. 50, No. 3 (Autumn, 1976), pp. 384-385
Published by: The President and Fellows of Harvard College
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3113002 .
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A HISTORY OF THE ICC: FROM PANACEA TO PALLIATIVE.
By Ari and Olive Hoogenboom. New York, W. W. Norton & Co., 1976.
Pp. xi + 207. $10.00, cloth; $2.95, paper.
Reviewed by Lewis L. Gould
Professor of History
University of Texas, Austin
In the current discontent over the performance of the regulatory
agencies, the Interstate Commerce Commission, as the oldest such body
in the federal government, has been a prominent and inviting target for
criticism. The Commission's present state of disrepute among scholars,
politicians, and transportation industry spokesmen, symbolized by the
Ford Administration's 1975 suggestion that railroads be allowed to set
some rates without ICC approval, presents a melancholy contrast to the
expectations held for federal regulation seventy-five years ago. Ari and
Olive Hoogenboom trace in this brief, trenchant study the shifting fortunes
of the Commission since its founding in 1887 and provide a provocative
case history of how the regulatory idea rose, flourished, and then
deteriorated.
The Hoogenbooms have read widely in the academic and professional
literature on regulation, and their account is informed and judicious. For
some topics they are able to add information from manuscript sources, but
they rely primarily and wisely on the solid work of Albro Martin, Gerald
Nash, K. Austin Kerr, and other students for the factual basis of their
narrative. They criticize the ICC for its persistent adherence to "value of
service pricing" and believe that "cost of service pricing" would have been
a more intelligent policy (56). The Commission's unwillingness at most
stages of its history "to develop broad administrative principles for the
nation's railroads" (55) also receives low marks from the Hoogenbooms
who stress their disappointment that the ICC has "remained a passive
quasi-judicial body rather than an active administrative tribunal" (188).
They conclude that "the combination of weak commissioners - whom
presidents appoint - and an entrenched, unimaginative bureaucracy,
anxious to preserve the status quo, has caused the ICC's problems" (x).
Though the Hoogenbooms must cover many complex problems in a few
pages, their treatment of controversial issues is perceptive and convincing.
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They suggest, using the unpublished findings of Jerome L. Sternstein, that
John M. Blum's popular and long-accepted thesis about Theodore Roosevelt's use of the tariff to push the Hepburn Act (1906) is overdrawn. Their
conclusion is correct and indicates that an understanding of the origins of
this significant regulatory measure remains about where it was when
Blum's biography of Roosevelt appeared two decades ago. Their handling
of the Mann-Elkins Act (1910) also underscores that the legislative history
of many of the important economic acts of the Progressive Era has yet to
be written.
In their bibliographical essay the authors describe the main argument of
Gabriel Kolko's Railroads and Regulation, 1877-1916 as "novel, exciting,
revealing, and misleading" (192). The thrust of the evidence in A History
of the ICC demonstrates that Kolko's contention that the railroads sought
the regulation that they were supposed to have opposed has obscured and
confused a proper comprehension of national railroad regulation in its
formative years. Given the distortions, incomplete evidence, and special
pleading of Kolko that the Hoogenbooms and others have shown, it is time
to use more reliable studies and to put Railroads and Regulation aside as
an historical curiosity.
One of the strengths of this book is its avoidance of bias in its discussion of the competing forces that the ICC dealt with in the regulatory
process. Aware of the mistakes, indiscretions, and power of the railroads,
the Hoogenbooms do not depict the industry as a villainous foil for virtuous
shippers, embattled consumers, and beleaguered commissioners. Why one
economic power should necessarily be regarded as having superior moral
claims to its competitors is a question that historians of the railroad issue
have not usually confronted, and the evenhandedness in this book represents a refreshing departure from the reflexive anti-railroad posture that
dominated work in this field until recently.
From the end of World War I to the present, the ICC moved away from
its pro-shipper position of the early twentieth century and became in turn
responsive to "railroads in the 1920s, truckers in the 1960s, and even a bit
to consumer advocates in the 1970s" (189). In none of these roles did the
Commission perform as its framers had hoped, and the "railroad problem"
remains unsolved. The conclusions of this thoughtful book do not give
much hope that the ICC will ever contribute toward a resolution of the
troubles facing American transportation. Students of that continuing problem can be grateful for the lucid analysis and careful research that the
Hoogenbooms provide toward a better grasp of how the ICC has evolved
from "panacea to palliative" in the last nine decades.
STEEL TITAN: THE LIFE OF CHARLES M. SCHWAB. By Robert
Hessen. New York, Oxford University Press, 1975. Pp. xvi + 350. $14.95.
Reviewed by Harold C. Livesay
Associate Professor of History
University of Michigan
The first thing to be said about this book is that we need it and a lot
more like it besides. Unfortunately we probably won't get them. Combing
through a mountain of published and unpublished materials and synthesizBOOK REVIEWS
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385