Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/832

814 its own record behind it. There would be retaliation, and there is no great company which can face having its record of the past years subjected to investigation."

These discriminations are very effective in competition for traffic and will continue an important factor in the railway situation as long as competition is a controlling element in rate-making. It is not even certain that they are not more harmful at present than when more common, and it may be that their baneful effects are accentuated now that, instead of being granted to nearly every applicant, concessions from established charges are accorded only to powerful traders who are able to control traffic sufficient in quantity to yield revenue of almost vital importance to the carrying companies. One of the ablest men ever appointed to be an Interstate Commerce Commissioner has publicly declared that—

"If we could unearth the secrets of these modern trusts, whose surprising exploits excite such wide apprehensions, we should find an explanation of their menacing growth in the systematic methods by which they have evaded the burden of transportation. The reduced charges which they have obtained, sometimes by favoritism and oftener by force, account in great measure for the colossal gains which they have accumulated."

And he adds:

"Indeed, I think it scarcely too much to say that no alliance of capital, no aggregation of productive forces, would prove of real or at least of permanent disadvantage if rigidly subjected to just and impartial charges for public transportation."

Unjust discriminations prejudicial to particular commodities have not been materially reduced in number by the operation of the Interstate Commerce Law. They appear, as has been said, in rate classifications and rate schedules, and the burden of proof is usually upon those who allege that they are unjust. The commission, in response to complaints brought before it, has found it necessary to prescribe the proper relations between rates for carrying the following pairs of commodities: Common soap and pearline, dried fruits and raisins, lumber and hub blocks, lumber and railway ties, wheat and flour, corn and its products, grain and grain products, celery and green vegetables, window shades and hollands, and petroleum and its products. These, however, involve but the smaller side of the question. It is not clear that rates as at present adjusted are relatively reasonable as between, for example, the products of agriculture and those of other industries, nor that they do not bear with undue relative severity either upon the grain producer of the trans-Mississippi region or the cotton planter of the Gulf States. These are matters with which the Interstate Commerce Law does not effectively deal, and which