The Heart of the Railroad Problem: The History of Railway Discrimination in the United States, the Chief Efforts at Control and the Remedies Proposed, with Hints from Other Countries

Parsons argues that the heart of the railroad problem lies not in rate levels or operational efficiency but in the question of the impartial treatment of shippers. The common law has always required common carriers to be impartial—to charge reasonable rates and refrain from undue preferences—yet Parsons documents that disregard of this rule is chronic and systematic. The book's twenty chapters marshaling official investigations of the preceding twenty-five years demonstrate that despite the Interstate Commerce Act, the Granger laws, and constitutional provisions, discrimination persisted in sixty-four distinct forms. Parsons's framing shifts the debate from technical economics to fundamental legal and moral principle.

The book catalogs sixty-four methods of evading the law, including direct and indirect rebates, free passes to influential persons, classification manipulations, commodity discriminations, and long-haul anomalies. Parsons shows that railways favored persons, places, and commodities constantly and habitually, with the pressure of private interest proving stronger than legal obligation. The free-pass system receives particular attention as vicious because it corrupts public officials—legislators, judges, and sheriffs—by giving them free transportation while ordinary shippers pay for both their own fares and those of the favored. The evidence is drawn from official investigations, making the pattern difficult to dismiss as anecdotal.

A contemporary review in the Journal of Political Economy observed that Parsons's documentation of past regulatory failures lays a good foundation for demanding more efficient public control. The book shows that the Interstate Commerce Commission and successive legislative efforts have been unable to stop discrimination. Parsons's conclusion is that if some means is not devised to put public interest above private interest, public ownership will continue to gain adherents. The book does not present public ownership as a radical demand but as the logical outcome of regulation's demonstrated inadequacy. This argument connects The Heart of the Railroad Problem to Parsons's broader advocacy for public ownership of monopolies.

The book was published by Little, Brown & Co. in Boston in 1906, running viii + 364 pages. It is available in full text through Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive, having entered the public domain. The Heart of the Railroad Problem is the culminating work of Parsons's railroad studies, following The Telegraph Monopoly (1899) and The Railways, the Trusts, and the People (1905). Where the earlier works addressed telegraph and general trust questions, this volume provides the most detailed empirical documentation of railway discrimination specifically, making it his definitive treatment of the subject.

The Heart of the Railroad Problem belongs to Parsons's earlier career as a social reformer and economic commentator, more than a decade before he founded the vocational guidance movement. Parsons wrote prolifically for The Arena, ran for Mayor of Boston in 1895, and authored books on currency, monopolies, municipal ownership, and New Zealand's social experiments. Historian Arthur Mann's study 'Frank Parsons: The Professor as Crusader' traces this reform period. Only in 1907 did Parsons submit plans for a Vocation Bureau, and Choosing a Vocation was published posthumously in 1909. The railroad book thus documents the systematic analysis of social problems and concern for the disadvantaged that Parsons brought to vocational guidance.