the whole burden of saving property from confiscation. The legislative bodies ought to do their part. Our social system rests largely upon the basis of private property, and that community which seeks to alter this will soon discover its error in the disaster which follows. The slight gain to the consumer, which he would obtain from a reduction in the rates charged by public service corporations is as nothing compared with his share in the ruin of which would be brought about by denying to private property its just reward, thus unsettling values and destroying confidence, With these the views of the United States Supreme Court it would seem that the present crisis may be faced with confidence. Much that I have just written I have said in this book and elsewhere; but I thought it might make clearer my point of view to my readers if I brought the argument to a focus here, at the outset. Personally I have no inclination to paraphrase what I have said formerly in one place when I wish to say the same thing in another connection, for fear that the repetition may be pointed out. As it happens, many topics in this book could be identified in other writings of mine upon this general subject. But in reality this treatise was largely written before these publications-not since. I wrote out the general scheme of this treatise about ten years ago and I have been using it as the basis for class discussion since, so that I have had the incalculable advantage of discussing this scheme with thousands of fellow students. From time to time I have finished off various chapters as contributions to various magazines, and here again I have had the great advantage of intelligent criticism. I should not in this preface have pointed this out, had it not been that I felt that I owed it to myself to explain why certain portions of this treatise have been in print before. In particular I thought it was only fair to say that most of what has been apparently taken from Beale and Wyman on Railroad Rate Regulation was the part I contributed to that work from my draft for this treatise, which I had already in hand five years ago at the time we were writing that book. In the next edition of the Railroad Rate Regulation we shall omit most of this matter, confining ourselves to commentary upon the current legislation, Federal and and State. The general principles of the public service law are now well enough understood, so that the inclusion of this general matter will be unnecessary. For my general scheme, which I have been working over so long I can, therefore, offer no apology; indeed, I am rather proud of this first analysis of this new division of the law. For the detailed execution, however, I must offer the usual excuses; for I have been too busied in my profession to give to this work all the time I could have wished. Some portions of the subject have perhaps interested me more and got in consequence greater care. I have had a policy of a sort in writing the text, however. Where I have been dealing, as in the first third and the last third of the treatise, with the new law of public service, I have cited all the cases I could find and given constant quotations from the decisions, so as to show that I was stating the law as it was, not as I was imagining it to be. In the middle third of the treatise I have dealt with much more familiar law, which I have summarized as briefly as I could, citing only such cases of the thousands I have handled as I thought would be of the greatest use. In the last few months I have hurried the whole work to conclusion as one will, feeling that I wanted to have what I had to say read while the law was in the making. For those who can realize by experience the labor of writing and putting through the press a work of this size and scope its errors and omissions will appear not unnatural or altogether inexcusable. I feel, however, that nothing of the sort will be so serious as to obscure the meaning of the text, and that the practical usefulness of the book will not be affected. In regard to the revision of the citations I have been fortunate in having this painstaking work done, with the exception of a few chapters when the printer was pressing us, by Miss Helen Thompson, the expert assistant to the Faculty of the Law School in the writing of our books. Not only has she taken charge of that very difficult part of modern bookmaking, the extension of the citations, but she has been of great assistance to me in many things outside of this feature of the work. Further I should acknowledge considerable aid in writing certain chapters from my brother-in-law, Albin L. Richards, Esq., of the Boston Bar. But most of all I would express my great gratitude to my colleague, Professor Joseph H. Beale, whose wise counsel has been my constant inspiration. CAMBRIDGE, January, 1911. B. W. : Topic A. The Mediaval Policy of Regulation § 2. The medieval theory of State control. 3. The regulation of business in the middle ages. Topic B. Persistence of this Police Power § 16. Continuance of State regulation. 17. Parliamentary regulation of rates. 18. Restriction of prices in the colonies. 19. Persistence of the legislative power. 20. Survival of the common law. 21. Callings connected with transportation. |