Bills were passed severely restricting the rights which companies had enjoyed of owning the stock of connecting railroads.

Many of the states sought to forbid the companies from charging more than two cents a mile for passenger fares.

The issuing of passes except under severe restrictions was made illegal.

The railroad companies were suddenly confronted by a mass of hostile and conflicting legislation which represented for the most part an honest attempt to fulfill a neglected responsibility, but whose effort on the whole merely embarrassed the operations of the roads, and which in many instances failed to protect the real public interests involved.

Even when this legislation was not ignorantly and unwisely conceived, and even when it was prepared by well-informed and well-intentioned men, it was informed by contradictory ideas and a false conception of the genuine abuses and their necessary remedies.
Consequently, a certain fraction of intelligent and disinterested public opinion began soon to realize that the results of a vigorous attempt on the part of the state governments to use their powers and to fulfill their responsibilities in respect to the railroads were actually worse and more dangerous to the public interest than was the previous neglect.
The neglect of the responsibility implied corruption, because it provoked blackmail.