In 1896 the railroads carried Minneapolis flour to New York for 10 cents a hundred, while charging New York State millers 18 cents a hundred to New York City.
President Stickney of the Chicago and Great Western Railroad, in a discussion the same year with the representatives of other western roads before the I. C. C., said: “You charge the Kansas and Nebraska farmer 13 cents to haul his grain 200 miles while you charge the grain dealer 6 cents to haul that same grain twice as far to Chicago.... I have been acquainted with this northwestern country for thirty-five years. In all that time there has never been a year that the corn crop was moved until after the corn was in the hands of dealers who had the rate. Once the farmer is compelled to sell his grain, then you fellows cut the rate for the dealer.” That is, the railroads charge the farmer shipping to the Missouri River a mileage rate 4 times as high as the rate to the dealers shipping to Chicago, and freeze out the small dealers from shipping to Chicago by making secret rates in favor of the big dealers.
Coal was shipped from Chicago to Omaha and then reshipped to Grinnell, Ia., 225 miles back toward Chicago, more cheaply than it could be got direct from Chicago.
“A large manufacturing establishment located in the latter town, making agricultural implements which were sold principally on the Pacific Coast, found it advantageous to abandon its plant and transfer its machinery and employees to Chicago on account of the unfavorable rates.
“A large factory for making barbed wire, located in the city of Des Moines, in like manner abandoned its buildings and transferred its establishment to Chicago, finding that it saved a large sum on every carload of wire it shipped, although the wire was mainly carried directly by or through its old location, 300 miles nearer the Pacific Coast than Chicago.”[[117]]
To certain towns in Nebraska and other States the railways have extended the same rates that apply to Missouri River points, where the rates to Chicago are very low, while other towns in the same region have to pay the Missouri River rates to and from Chicago, plus the local rate from the river point.[[118]]
The extent to which railroads sometimes go in place discriminations is shown by cases cited in Cator and Lewis. One of the towns on the route of the Northern Pacific in Montana incurred the displeasure of the railway authorities, and they determined to ruin it and build up a new town. So they refused to stop their trains in the town or have a depot there. The railroad built a new depot on lands of its own, 3 miles beyond, and ran its trains through the old town to the new site, thereby feeding its revenge and enhancing the value of its own land at the same time, at the cost of ruining the town already established. The courts sustained the railroad’s claim that it had a right to run through to the new depot, though some of the judges dissented, regarding such favor as despotic and destructive of public rights.[[119]]
“A town in the State of Iowa, which had thriven under reasonable railroad facilities, was almost depopulated by a change of ownership of the railroad line upon which it depended.
“As the result of discrimination forty American families were driven out of this small town in a single year. Their property was rendered almost worthless, and with great pecuniary loss from no fault of their own they were obliged to abandon their homes and seek new habitations and new avocations. Cases like this were abundant throughout the West. This merely illustrates what was going on in a dozen great States where cities, towns, and villages were being depopulated or their business establishments placed at great disadvantage by reason of iniquitous discriminations.”[[120]]
Peopled flocked into the towns and cities favored with the low rates, and when the competitive rates were removed, as they have been in many cases, the boom towns collapsed, and the inflated building and business interests shrunk to skin and bone.