542 HARVARD LAW REVIEW than self-interest, to keep them down to it. One critic has been led to the conclusion that "to say that the rate must not exceed what the service is reasonably worth . . . means nothing." ® More exactly, perhaps, to say that the rate must not exceed what the service is reasonably worth, in any normal sense of worth, means nothing. Though the proposition means nothing if the words are taken in their ordinary sense, and nothing true in what- ever sense they are taken, it may in some special sense of the words mean something false. The sense which is given to the value of the service is not only special but various. The Interstate Commerce Commission has spoken of "value of the service, with its bundle of constituents," ** without further definition; and again has used the phrase in the sense of the rates that "commodities and the industries that use them can well stand." ^ In another case, the thing the commis- sion had chiefly in mind seems to have been the rates commonly charged for similar services.^® In Silk Association of America v. Pennsylvania Railroad Co.,^"^ the commission said, "Illustra- tive of the value of service is the percentage that the rate paid bears to the value of the article." A federal court has spoken of "the value of the service to the shipper" as "including the value of the goods and the profit he could make out of them by shipment." ^^ These various matters have one broad feature in common: they all go to public policy. That is, they affect the question what it is or may be thought desirable to charge for a service, as dis- tinguished from the question what the service costs. No list can be drawn of all the considerations which may affect a tribunal's view of pubHc policy in its bearing on rates. When value of serv- ice is spoken of, as it usually is, without attempt at definition, " Robert L. Hale, "The Supreme Court's Ambiguous Use of 'Value' in Rate Cases," i8 Col. L. Rev. 208, 210. " Boileau v. P. & L. E. R. R., 22 I. C. C. 640, 652 (1912).
- Coke Producers' Assn. v. B. and O. R. R., 27 I. C. C. 125, 132 (1913).
^ Railroad Commrs. of Iowa v. Illinois Central R. R., 20 I. C. C. 181, 186, and 189 (1911). Cf. Re Kent Water & Light Co., P. U. R. 1917 D, 394, 397, where the Ohio Public Utilities Commission said: "The value of the service ... is reflected more or less by what such service is usually furnished for by other companies to other con- sumers imder similar circumstances." *^ 44 I. C. C. 578, 580 (1917).
- Interstate Commerce Com. v. Chicago Great Western Ry., 141 Fed. 1003, 1015
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