The B. & O. was also sued for refusing to furnish cars to the Glade Coal Company, while supplying cars to competing mines.[[246]]
In the case of the West Virginia Northern Railroad[[247]] the Circuit Court issued a mandamus ordering the road to cease from discrimination against the Kingwood Coal Company in the supply of cars and to furnish said company with a specified percentage of cars. In affirming this decision the Circuit Court of Appeals said:
“It is insisted that the court had no power in a proceeding of this character to fix the percentage of cars the relator should have, and to command that such percentage of cars should be furnished to the relator. The acts of Congress forbade discrimination and made it unlawful to give any undue or unreasonable preference or advantage to particular persons, companies, corporations, or localities, or any particular description of traffic, or to subject them to any undue or unreasonable prejudice or disadvantage in any respect whatsoever, and vested jurisdiction in the circuit and district courts to proceed by mandamus as a cumulative remedy for violations of the statutory provisions. We are unable to accept the view that Congress intended to confine the scope of the writ to admonition merely, or to a general command to desist from discrimination, rather than from the particular action in which the discrimination consisted. By the findings, the delivery to the relator of any less than 31 percent of the supply amounted to unlawful discrimination, and the judgment of the court did no more than to correct it.”
Sometimes it is the denial of a switch, that blocks the independent; for example, the railroads controlled by the coal pool refused to put in a switch for the Johnson coal mine or to permit the company to put one in until suit to forfeit its charter for refusing equal opportunities to shippers was begun in the Ohio Supreme Court. Then the switch was put in.
The Coal Combine and its railroads have persistently pursued the policy of crushing smaller rivals by denying them transportation facilities.
An exasperating form of discrimination near of kin to this refusal of cars is the refusal directly or indirectly to take shipments for certain persons or to certain points. The Hope Cotton Oil Company operates a mill at Hope, Ark., for the manufacture of cotton-seed oil. It desired to buy seed at various points on the Texas and Pacific Railroad. This seed could only reach the mill by passing over the Texas and Pacific to Texarkana and from there to Hope by the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railroad. The published rate from the points in question to Texarkana was 12½ cents per hundred, and 5 cents from Texarkana to Hope. After receiving this information the agent of the Hope Company bought 49 carloads of seed on the line of the Texas and Pacific, intending to send them to Texarkana on the 12½ cent rate and from there to Hope on the 5 cent rate. Seventeen cars were sent in this way. But when the General Freight Agent of the Texas and Pacific ascertained what was being done, he refused to allow the shipments to continue, insisting that the seed must take the broad joint rate of 67 cents applicable to class A in which cotton seed belonged. Under his orders the station agents on the Texas and Pacific refused to bill the cars in any way to Texarkana on the published local rate of 12½ cents. The 67 cent rate amounted to $13.40 a ton on seed which only cost $14 a ton, and to insist on such a rate the Commission says “was for all practical purposes to decline to receive the cotton seed for shipment on any terms.”[[248]] The secret of the situation was that the Texas and Pacific did not want the cotton seed to go off of its line. If shipped to Texarkana mills or other mills on its line the products would find their way to market over that road, while if manufactured at Hope this would not probably be the case.
Denying a private switch to one party while providing such facility for a competing dealer[[249]] may amount to a preference similar to that resulting from free cartage.
A discrimination in the place of delivery of freight may work serious injury to a shipper. For example, D. W. Miner, a dealer in beef and pork products at Providence, complains to the Interstate Commerce Commission, July, 1905, that the New Haven road refuses to deliver his merchandise at the Canal Street yard where his place of business is located, carrying his freight half a mile beyond, while delivery is made to his competitors at the Canal Street yard.
Sometimes railroads discriminate even on long hauls in interstate traffic by taking advantage of the fact that the Interstate Commerce Act does not apply to State traffic. They take the car across the State line on a “mem.-bill,” then draw a new bill of lading marked “State Business,” and then pay the rebate without fear of disagreeable consequences.
In other cases the full freight is charged on the way-bill, but a fictitious entry is made in the prepaid column which is to be subtracted from the total amount of charges when the bill is collected. If the freight on a car amounted to $90, and $15 were entered in the prepaid column, $75 would be collected and the consignee would be in the same position as if he had received a rebate of $15 on the car.