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Well, Hill knew what was going on; he knew what the story was here. So Hill moved to Washington, D.C. He set up residence in the Capitol. He personally talked to the congressmen. He testified before their special committees. He told them what was going on: the root cause of the problem was big government getting in there where it had no business being in the first place, financing those railroads, spending other people's money on rails. That caused the corruption. Hill gave the example of his railroad. He did not accept one penny of government money while his railroad built up all the industry in the Northwest. And now his line was promoting an explosion of American trade into Asia while the three government-sponsored lines were sinking in corruption.
Now, the congressmen were intelligent men. They were college educated. They knew what Hill was saying. They knew he made perfect sense. They knew his account was the truth, but they did not care because they wanted to justify their own jobs. So they ignored him. They ignored Hill, and they went on to pass the ICC and the Sherman Antitrust legislation, which enabled them to get in and heavily regulate and punish the railroads.
Hill even wrote a book on this whole ordeal and circulated his book to the congressmen, explaining the situation. He presented all the evidence that showed how Congress was doing the wrong thing. But the big-government ruling class ignored Hill because they wanted to advance their own power. The career politicians went ahead and passed the ICC, passed the Sherman Antitrust legislation. And what did that do? Those regulations "for the public good" made it illegal for railroads to make any special deals with customers. They had to charge the same standard rate to all customers. Therefore, the dynamics Hill used to build up his railroad, to move in people for free, to make their dreams come true, to ship their freight for free or for a low cost until they got established...was now illegal! Those same dynamics that he was now using to spearhead an American dominance of trade in Asia were all now illegal! Wham! Hill was a genius of society who was pushing up the lid to lift all America into a jack-in-the-box explosion of prosperity -- and WHAM! Big-government regulations smashed him down. Hill's drive into Asia was over.
The year after the ICC's legislation passed, America's trade with Japan alone dropped by 40%. Now remember, Hill was spearheading a geometrical increase in trade. Trade with Japan and China was increasing geometrically. Now Congress passed this legislation and, plop, everything dropped 40%.
Hill was forced to sell his steamship lines, he got out of trade completely with Asia, and he was so frustrated, he retired. Suddenly, the miracle was over. Now, this was a hundred years ago. Let us stop and look at the implications of this. Let us stretch this out to see what Congress really cut off a hundred years ago. It was bad enough they cut off Hill's trade with Asia back then and destroyed the wealth, lives and dreams of many entrepreneurs dependent on Hill's dynamics, but let us project that into the future to see what they cut off today:
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