Things came to a head in the 1880s. There was virtually no tradition of regulating the economy at the federal level except during times of war, and proposals in Washington, DC, to regulate railroads, repeatedly went down in defeat. The state governments responded by passing laws to regulate railroad rates that impacted trips beyond their borders. In 1886, the Supreme Court struck these down, ruling that the federal government alone had this power.11 Suddenly the public confronted a stark reality: The states “could not, and the federal government would not, regulate railroads.”12 This new
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