RIVAL CONTRACTORS AND THE BLOTTING PAD.
In rails, the same system has prevailed. Ironmasters have been pitted against each other, as to which should produce an apparent rail at the lowest price. At the outset
of railways the rails were made of iron. Competition gradually produced rails in which a core, of what is technically called “cinder,” is covered up with a skin of iron; and the cleverest foreman for an ironmaster was the man who could make rails with the maximum of cinder and the minimum of iron. In more than one instance has it been known in relaying an old line the worn-out rails have been sold at a higher price per ton than the new ones were bought for; yet this would hardly open the eyes of the buyers. The contrivances which are resorted to to get hold of one another’s prices beforehand by competing contractors are manifold; and, when they attend in person, they commonly put off the filling up of their tender till the last moment. Once a shrewd contractor found himself at the same inn with a rival who always trod close on his heels. He was followed about and cross-questioned incessantly, and gave vague answers. Within half-an-hour of the last moment he went into the coffee room and sat himself down in a corner where his rival could not overlook him. There and then he filled up his tender, and, as he rose from the table, left behind him the paper on which he had blotted it. As he left the room his rival caught up the blotting paper, and, with the exulting glee of a consciously successful rival, read off the amount backwards. “Done this time!” was his mental thought, as he filled up his own tender a dollar lower, and hastened to deposit it. To his utter surprise, the next day he found that he had lost the contract, and complainingly asked his rival how it was, for he had tendered below him. “How did you know you were below me?” “Because I found your blotting paper.” “I thought so. I left it on purpose for you, and wrote another tender in my bedroom. You had better make your own calculations next time!”
—Roads and Rails, by W. B. Adams.