CHAPTER XXIV.
VARIOUS OTHER METHODS.
Railroads are in the habit of giving special rates on stuff sent over their lines for other roads. “It is done,” says one of the leading traffic managers of the country, “on everything that is handled,—supplies, coal, and material.”[[239]] This enables any one who stands in with the management of a railroad to have coal, etc., billed at low rates to the railroad for him.
The routing of freight is the source of a double discrimination. Connecting lines in some cases pay shippers to route the goods over their roads, while in other cases the connecting lines pay the rebates to the originating line, or make an agreement with it for reciprocal favors in the routing of freight.[[240]] Shippers receiving rebates from a connecting line can afford to pay the originating road or its clerks to route the goods over the said connecting line. Mr. Morawetz says it is customary for shippers to pay clerks in the routing department $5 or $10 to route the goods the way the shipper desires. Or it is done by giving theatre parties or presents to wives and daughters.[[241]]
In the California Orange Routing Case (132 Fed. Rep. 829) the United States Circuit Court decided that an agreement between railroads as to routing, whereby the apportionment of freight to connecting roads is affected, is in the nature of a traffic pool and comes within the prohibition of pooling, Section 5, of the Interstate Act.
The Interstate Commission held that the regulations of the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe, reserving to themselves the right of routing, were unlawful under the discrimination clauses, but the court did not decide this point. (I. C. C. Rep. 1904, p. 78.)
Mr. Ferguson says the private car-lines “sell the tonnage to the highest bidding connecting line. It is purely a matter of bargain and sale.”[[242]]
Unfair distribution of cars is an easy means of discrimination. Failure to furnish cars to complainant for shipments of grain, while supplying more than a fair proportion of cars to a competing shipper in the same town, is as effective as any rebate could be.[[243]]
Railways have refused cars to persons desiring to ship railroad ties which the railways did not wish to have go out of their own field.[[244]]
A Michigan railroad neglected to furnish the Richmond Elevator Company with cars in which to ship the hay the company had contracted to deliver, although the railroad was all the while supplying other shippers with cars for hay and straw, etc.[[245]]
The Pennsylvania Railroad has been recently sued by independent coal companies along its line for $2,000,000 damages for refusal to furnish cars in fair proportion. It is charged that the mines in which the railroad company is interested have had all the cars they needed, while the independents have not received cars enough to fill their orders; in consequence of which great loss has been inflicted upon them and their business diverted to the railway mines.