James L. Kerrigan of Phoenix has grown perfectly livid about the nationalization of railroad passenger service under Amtrak, and he is not the sort to just sit home grumbling at his television set.

Over the past year he has been giving Chamber of Commerce tub thumpers on the subject, writing articles and sending off scathing letters to Amtrak’s management.  Amtrak, in Mr. Kerrigan’s view, is an “elitist transportation system”—its customers sip gin in the lounge cars over talk about welfare freeloaders, never acknowledging that Amtrak, and derivatively themselves, are among the biggest welfare cases of all.

Worst of all, Amtrak threatens those sturdy, hard working, efficient companies that must make it or break it in the transportation business without help from Washington.  Companies such as Greyhound Lines (a subsidiary of Greyhound Corporation), of which Mr. Kerrigan is chairman and chief executive officer.

No one begrudges Mr. Kerrigan his right to make a federal case of his company’s difficulties; if we only listened to disinterested views we would have very little to go on in any area of public policy.  But what is fascinating about Mr. Kerrigan’s strong views on free enterprise is their very limited scope.

Just ask Ian M. Milloy of Jacksonville, Florida, whose plans for a retirement career as an independent bus operator were being snuffed out by the federal government, at the behest of Greyhound’s lawyers, while Mr. Kerrigan was busy condemning federal intervention in passenger transportation.

Mr. Milloy ran a bus company as a young man in his native Scotland, before coming to the United States and becoming a mechanical engineer.  When he retired a few years ago he began operating his own bus tours around the state of Florida—a group of senior citizens to Disney World, a high school class to Miami, that sort of thing.  With his kilted charm, his stereo-equipped bus, his talents as a storyteller at roadside picnics, and his low rates, Mr. Milloy soon became a darling of Jacksonville travel agents.

Before long he was getting bigger requests.  Could he take a group of grade schoolers to Memphis?  His bagpipe band to a clan gathering in North Carolina?  These he could not accept because, as his lawyer patiently explained, in the United States it is against the law to drive a bus across a state line without the acquiescence of the Interstate Commerce Commission.  So the necessary papers were prepared and forwarded to Washington, where in due course they came to the attention of Greyhound’s lawyers.

Greyhound (and Trailways) protested, which meant that in further due course (one year), Mr. Milloy had to appear at a hearing before an ICC judge.  A hearing of this kind is like a trial, where a person in Mr. Milloy’s position stands accused of attempting to provide a service that is not “required by the present or future public convenience and necessity.”

Mr. Milloy’s case was his reputation, competence and concern for his passenger’s safety, attested to by travel agents, a school teacher, the Morocco Temple Pilgrimage Committee and the Sons of Scotland Bagpipe Band.  Greyhound/Trailways’ case was that Mr. Milloy, if allowed to provide charter bus trips, would compete with them.

Greyhound/Trailways won.  After a lengthy opinion which took five months to write, the ICC judge held that these companies “are entitled to all traffic that they can handle economically and efficiently within the scope of their operating authority before a new, competitive service is authorized.”

Mr. Milloy, a wily old Scotsman, is not finished yet.  He barraged Congressmen with letters and got his case trumpeted in newspaper editorials and a number of television shows.  As a result, the ICC announced last spring that it would “reconsider” his case, and the Department of Justice intervened on his behalf.  Conceivably, the commission may eventually permit him to drive his bus before he is too old to do so.

Whether or not Greyhound finally succeeds in swatting this particular gnat, it is plain that the ICC’s restraints on entry and other types of legitimate competition reward the established bus lines with enormous benefits—an implicit subsidy which may approach Amtrak’s explicit subsidy.  Naturally, Greyhound is one of the most energetic opponents of ICC deregulation; recently it has begun to campaign for outright cash grants to government-approved bus companies such as itself.