William Hepburn House, Clarinda

That modest house on West Lincoln Street is a National Historic Landmark, and the reason is a congressman named William Peters Hepburn. He lived here from eighteen sixty-seven until his death in nineteen sixteen and served Iowa in the House of Representatives for a combined twenty-two years.

Hepburn's signature achievement was the Hepburn Act of nineteen oh six. Working alongside President Theodore Roosevelt, he pushed through legislation that gave the federal Interstate Commerce Commission the power to actually set railroad freight rates, not just review them. Before Hepburn, the railroads set their own prices, and farmers in Iowa and across the Midwest had almost no recourse against price gouging. The Hepburn Act was the strongest railroad regulation law in American history at the time and established the precedent that federal government could regulate private industry in the public interest. That idea has shaped American economic policy ever since.