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Agrarian Protests of the Nineteenth Century and Today

Uploaded by lmmu on May 25, 2007

1877’s Supreme Court case Munn v. Illinois created much controversy. It dealt with whether or not the Illinois legislature possessed the constitutional rights to control charges for grain storage. After examining many perspectives, including merchants, farmers, and the government, the judge and some justices still differed in views. They faced tough questions with trying answers. Did the government hold the right to manage private institutions? For that matter, what defined a private or public institution? This problem plagues America today, in situations like eminent domain, but clearly neither federal nor state officials retain the right to control non-government establishments.

One important perspective included farmers. After facing several decades of suffering-falling crop price levels, increasing necessary expenses, and capricious charges from monopolistic services (chiefly railroads)-the Midwestern cultivators formed the Illinois State Farmer’s Association. At a convention in 1873, they passed a series of resolutions, dealing with grievances, in hopes to better their essential occupation. Mainly, they grew exasperated with the corrupt railroads, but concluded that all railways needed to connect, thus lessening the difficulties of travel and trade. Also, the farmers wanted tariffs for iron, steel, lumber, and other railroad and machinery materials to cease, and to gain railroad support for this matter. Meanwhile, they desired legislative support for themselves and strong punishment for the law-breaking and unconstitutional railroads. Most importantly, they decided that railroads needed government regulations to subdue the public by implementing equal train fares.

Therefore, the case four years later should have overjoyed the farmers; although Munn v. Illinois centered on grain storage, one implication of the ruling included railroads. Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite determined whether the state of Illinois carried the right to decide “maximum of charges for the storage of grain in warehouses.” By citing the fourteenth amendment of the U.S. Constitution, “no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law . . .”, he noted that government already limited its power, a notion as old as the Magna Carta. He remarked that almost every U.S. State Constitution maintains this principle and to deny it destroys a part of citizenship.

However, Waite continued with a description of a “body politic” as defined by the Massachusetts Constitution, though the case lied in Illinois. Simply stated, a body politic exists when all citizens live and work...

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Uploaded by:   lmmu

Date:   05/25/2007

Category:   American

Length:   3 pages (737 words)

Views:   3441

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