Page:United States Reports, Volume 209.djvu/107

 209 U. 8. Opinion of the Court. days' notice. Sec. 6, 25 Stat. 855. There is no provision ex- cepting special contracts from the operation of the law. One rate is to be charged and that the one fixed and published in the manner pointed out in the statute, and subiect to change in the only way open by the statute. There is no provision for the fng of contracts with shippers and no method of making them public defined in the statute. If the rates are subject to secret alteration by special agreement then the statute will fail of ts purpose to establish a rate duly pub- lished, known to all, and from which neither shipper nor carrier may depart. It is said that if the carrier saw fit to change the published rate by contract the effect will be to make the rate available to all other shippers. But the law is not limited to giving equal rates by indirect and uncertain methods. It has pro- vided for the establishing of one rats, to be filed as provided, subject to change as provided, and that rat to be while in force the only legal rate. Any other construction of the stat- uts opens the door to the possibility of the very abuses of unequal rates which it was the design of the statute to pro- hibit and punish. Nor do we find anything in the provisions of the statute inconsistent with this conclusion in the fact that the statute makes the rate as published or filed conclusive on the carderr The carrier files and publishes the rate. It may well be con- cluded by its own action. But neither shipper nor carrier may ary from the duly filed and published rate without incurring the penalty of the law. It may be, as urged by petitioner, that this constructiQn renders impossible the making of contracts for the future delivery of such merchandise as the petitioner deals in, and that the instability of the rate introduces a factor of uncer- tainty, destructive of contract rights heretofore enjoyed in such property. This feature of the law, it is insisted, puts the shipper in many kinds of trade at the mercy of the carder, who may arbitrarily change a rate, upon the faith of which

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