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The Interstate Commerce Commission (or ICC) was a regulatory body in the United States created by the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, which was signed into law by President Grover Cleveland. The agency was abolished in 1995, and the agency's remaining functions were transferred to the Surface Transportation Board. The Commission's five members were appointed by the President with the consent of the United States Senate. This was the first independent agency (or so-called Fourth Branch). The ICC's original purpose was to regulate railroads (and later trucking) to ensure fair rates, to eliminate rate discrimination, and to regulate other aspects of common carriers. The creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission was the result of widespread and longstanding anti-railroad agitation. Western farmers, specifically those of the Grange Movement, were the dominant force behind the unrest, but Westerners generally — especially those in rural areas — believed that the railroads possessed economic power that they systematically abused. A central issue was rate discrimination between similarly situated customers and communities. Other potent issues included alleged attempts by railroads to obtain influence over city and state governments and the widespread practice of granting free transportation in the form of yearly passes to opinion leaders (elected officials, newspaper editors, ministers, and so on) so as to dampen any opposition to railroad practices. Some behavior was presumably less common; the reporter Charles Edward Russell claimed that the railroad that served his hometown had refused to ship newsprint to a newspaper editor because the editor had attacked the railroad in print. Various sections of the Interstate Commerce Act banned "personal discrimination" and gave the Commission the power to determine maximum "reasonable" rates. Equally significant, the Elkins Act required that rates be published.
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