Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/145

THE BICYCLE AND THE COMMON CARRIER, 1 25 riding, or returning weary from a ride into the country, are carried back to town ; and then calculate how many extra passengers the bicycle makes for the railroad. Secondly, if the surgeon is entitled to have his surgical instru- ments carried, and the mechanic his tools, the student his books, and the sportsman his gun, why may not the bicyclist have his bicycle transported with him? It is difficult to see why not The instruments of the surgeon, the tools of the mechanic, the books of the student, or the gun of the sportsman are each respectively no more intimately connected with the purpose of the journey of the traveller than is the bicycle with the purpose of the bicyclist's jour- ney. The bicycle has, perhaps, in point of time, a closer connec- tion, for the surgeon, the mechanic, the student, or the sportsman may reach his destination in advance of his baggage without per- haps serious inconvenience ; but if on reaching his destination the bicyclist is not able immediately to get his bicycle and ride on, the very purpose of the journey is defeated. The only arguments that can be made in favor of the carrier are : first, that the bicycle is inconvenient to carry on account of its size and shape; and, second, that it is not customarily car- ried as baggage. To the first we answer that bicycles are very generally and usually carried when an extra tariff is paid, and al- though charging a few extra pennies for transportation does not alter the size and shape of the bicycle, yet it silences complaints, and we hear nothing further of inconvenience. We do not admit the second, for to-day it hardly yet can be said to be a general cus- tom. There is danger, however, in the continued submission of the bicyclist to the extortionate demands of the carrier that the arbitrary practice will ripen into a universal custom, and then at last stiffen into a rigid rule of law, to deprive a bicyclist of his right to have his bicycle transported with him as his personal baggage without the court ever sufficiently considering the subject. It may be that when this question is presented again the court may reach the same conclusion as the Missouri court. Perhaps, how- ever, some court may be influenced to interpret the definition of " baggage " in a way commensurate with the development of the steam and electric carriers of to-day, still having in mind the much quoted words of Lord Chief Justice Cockburn,^ " Whatever disad- vantages attach to a system of unwritten law, and of these we are 1 Wason V. Walter, L. R. 4 Q. B. 73, 93.