Excerpt from 61st Annual Report of the Interstate Commerce Commission: November 1, 1947 The processes of reconstruction following the war have made the period covered by this report one of extreme difficulty for the public carriers of this country, and for their patrons. Attempts to cope with the situation have increasingly brought the carriers, shippers, and the traveling public before us in a series of N ation-wide and district-wide controversies of great magnitude, necessarily overlapping and requir ing - expedition. We referred in our annual report for last year to the interaction of conflicting economic forces which then were producing issues in regulation both novel and difficult, and of a complexity rarely, if ever before, equaled. The same statement may be made of the current year, with added emphasis. The United States remains the only major nation wholly dedicated to the maintenance of private enterprise in the conduct of transporta tion. Problems of postwar adjustment in the transportation field necessarily assume more varied and complex forms here than in countries which fol'ow other principles and administrative practices. These perplexing problems are inherent in the preservation of the institution of private conduct of transportation, which the country cherishes as consonant with the general character of our institutions, as well as for the superior and more varied services provided. The United States is not alone in experiencing rate increases in the present year. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.