Manuscripts Collection
Since the ICC is the federal agency that regulates rail carriers, it is intimately involved in the affairs of all railroad corporations and has juridical authority over them. It adjudicates litigations concerning railroads and rail service matters that have an interstate significance. The files in this series are therefore concerned with a wide variety of legal matters. The most frequent file topics are freight and passenger rates. Other common topics are competition and restraint of trade (especially suits involving motor freight carriers), service changes, loss and damage claims, labor disputes, and ICC regulations for transporting various commodities. In addition to lawsuits are applications by railroads for permission to abandon lines, to add or merge lines, and to issue bonds or capital stock.
In most cases, Northern Pacific was a defendant. Cases were brought by a variety of entities, including state regulatory agencies, other companies (especially shippers), chambers of commerce, industry trade groups representing classes of shippers, U.S. government agencies, and individual citizens.
Files typically contain printed and typescript court documents (petitions and responses, trial transcripts, testimony, exhibits, and court orders), as well as NP law department correspondence, notes, and memoranda.
Files are arranged numerically by docket number in a single sequence.
The Northern Pacific Law Department records contain analagous series of docket files for litigations and petitions brought in various state jurisdictions. There is a separate series for each state through which NP passed. Additional information is available in the inventory notebooks in the Minnesota Historical Society reference library.
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the catalog of the Minnesota Historical Society. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons or places should
Accession number: NP 6812-6941
Processed by: Dennis Meissner
Catalog ID number: 09-00027835
Docket # 802).
This very large file breaks down into separate subfiles dealing with particular commodities, including sand and gravel, cotton, cottonseed, livestock, petroleum and petroleum products, furniture, iron and steel products, hay, nonferrous metals, and salt. Files dealing with livestock are the most voluminous. The commodity subfiles appear in roughly the order given in this list, though there is no clear or reliable demarcation among the commodities.
Rate competition between water and rail carriers.
Independent ICC investigation into the transportation of consolidated carload freight.
Independent ICC investigation into the transportation of consolidated carload freight.
Independent ICC investigation into the transportation of consolidated carload freight.
See NP. Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway Company. ICC files (134.L.16.7B) for folders 4-5.
This extensive investigation addresses the issue of whether freight/class rates should be determined by territory or should be simplified and unified on a national level. ICC cases 2528 and 2529 (q.v.) are companion cases, both instituted by order on July 29, 1939. Because of this interrelationship, many materials relevant to both cases can be found in either file.
SEE ALSO 2528 for related files and for an explanation of the cases.
An application to operate the present-day Minneapolis and St. Louis Railroad as a separate entity.
Regarding livestock shipped from Idaho to the East.
Regarding livestock shipped from Idaho to interstate destinations.
Many of the exhibits are photographs of Grantsburg, Taylors Falls, and other communities.
Antitrust case.
This case involves government war materials reparations against the railroads.
Regarding transportation of iron and steel products.
Regarding aerial bomb clusters.