2/24/2012:
On January 24, 1906, US Congressman William Hepburn of Iowa introduced legislation for the Hepburn Rate Bill, also known as the Railroad Rate Bill, to the House of Representatives. This bill was strongly endorsed by President Theodore Roosevelt, and would grant power to the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate railroad shipping rates.
After the bill was debated for several weeks, it passed through the House of Representatives un-amended. Around this date, reports from Washington stated that, by a vote of eight to five, the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce agreed to report the Hepburn railroad rate bill without amendment.
The senate had not been receptive to similar attempts at such reforms, as a year before when the Esch Townsend railroad rate bill came from the House, it received “a hostile reception.” The Hepburn bill would not escape similar examination, and was also debated, and amendment after amendment was added to the bill before it passed the Senate and was sent back to the House.
The residents of North Dakota, with so many towns gaining existence as a result of being used as Railroad depots, watched this debate as it unfolded along with the rest of the country. A newspaper in Arizona reported that “it is predicted there will be delays of all sorts and obstructive tactics used to delay the bill on the floor of the senate … other leading senators said they favored placing the bill on the calendar ahead of the statehood bill,” an issue that had been ongoing for several years that would culminate in the Enabling bill of 1906 and affected the statehood of Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma territory.
And it is perhaps because of this bill, (and other news of a scandal among county commissioners in Ward County,) that the Ward County Independent repeated this comment from the Stanley Sun, “that no wise Minot father would long to have his son become a county commissioner or a collector of railroad taxes.”
In the end, the Senate passed their amended version of the bill, and after returning to the House, the Hepburn Rate Bill became law on June 29, 1906.
Dakota Datebook written by Sarah Walker
Sources:
http://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/hepburn/
Ward County Independent, February 22, 1906
Daily Ward County Reporter, February 25, 1906
Arizona Journal-Miner, February 24, 1906 http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=914&dat=19060224&id=8H5PAAAAIBAJ&sjid=JFIDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5560,2241378
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/E/EN001.html