LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Interstate Commerce Commission: Interstate Commerce Act
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The Interstate Commerce Act sought to address the problem by setting guidelines for how the railroads could do business. However, the task of establishing specific measures was complex, and regulators lacked a clear mission. The law sought to prevent monopoly by promoting competition, and ... to outlaw discriminatory rate-setting. Its most successful provisions were a requirement that railroads submit annual reports to the ICC, and a ban on special rates the railroads would arrange among themselves. Determining which rates were discriminatory proved to be technically and politically difficult, though, and in practice the law was not highly effective.
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Approved on February 4, 1887, the Interstate Commerce Act created an Interstate Commerce Commission to oversee the conduct of the railroad industry. With this act, the railroads became the first industry subject to Federal regulation.
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It was the ICC that proposed to Congress that the Interstate Commerce Act be amended to give powers to the ICC to undertake valuations of railroads. This was to allow the ICC to make judgements on a fair return on investment for the railroads. In fact Congress did not amend the Interstate Commerce Act, but instead passed the Valuation Act on 1 March 1913. It was later claimed by ICC to have gone beyond what they (the ICC) had requested.
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In 1887 Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act, making the railroads the first industry subject to Federal regulation. Congress passed the law largely in response to public demand that railroad operations be regulated. The act ... established a five-member enforcement board known as the Interstate Commerce Commission. In the years following the Civil War, railroads were privately owned and entirely unregulated. The railroad companies held a natural monopoly in the areas that only they serviced.
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[O]f the report of the special Senate committee on Interstate Commerce, the Interstate Commerce Act was passed February 4, 1887. The considerations that led to its passage are given below in the committee’s report. The main provisions of the act are these:—
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This section, known as the Commerce Clause, gives Congress the power to regulate commercial activity between the states. The commission possessed only limited regulatory muscle until the first decades of the 20th century. At that time, broadened Supreme Court interpretations of the Commerce Clause and legislative amendments to the Interstate Commerce Act provided the ICC with the authority to set rates charged by railroads, determine profit levels within the railroad industry, and organize mergers between railroad companies. By the early 1950s, the jurisdiction of the commission extended to all types of surface transportation vehicles and channels, including railroads, ferries, bridges, internal waterways, coastal and intercoastal shipping activity, trucking, and bus transportation.
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Interstate Commerce Act