But the St. Louis Southwestern Traffic Committee or Traffic Association employed a young man by the name of Camden and instructed him to lay before the Interstate Commission any evidence he got of the payment of rebates. “He had not been there more than two or three weeks before he found some evidence to the effect that the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad had been departing from the published rate, and he came up to Washington and laid that evidence before the Interstate Commerce Commission, and we began proceedings against the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. That was the first instance from the time I came onto the Commission that we could obtain any evidence of a departure from the published rate. We directed the Baltimore and Ohio road to file a statement showing what shipments they had made during a certain time, and the rate of freight paid them for the transportation. Thereupon they filed a statement showing a great many departures from the published rate. At the same time they sent to the Interstate Commerce Commission a letter. They said in that letter in substance, that the roads in the territory in which they operated had habitually departed from the published rate; that was after they had sworn they maintained the published rate in that territory: ‘Now, for us, the receivers of the Baltimore and Ohio, we have gotten through, but we cannot maintain the rate unless our competitors maintain the rate. We propose from this time on to maintain the rate ourselves, and we propose to see that they maintain it; but in order that we may do that, we ask you to call a conference of the railroad presidents in trunk-line territory.’
“Now the Commission did, acting on that suggestion, invite every president of the trunk-line railroads to come to Washington. They came, all of them. Mr. Calloway was there for the New York Central; Mr. Thompson was there for the Pennsylvania Railroad; Mr. Murray and Mr. Cowan came there for the Baltimore and Ohio; Mr. Harris came from the Philadelphia and Reading, and Mr. Walters was there for the Lehigh Valley. I do not remember them all, but they all came there. Those gentlemen all said: ‘It is true; we have departed from the published rate. We did not like to do it, but we did. But we have gotten through. We shall depart from the published rate no more. If you gentlemen will only let bygones be bygones, we assure you that in the future there will be no discrimination under this law.’
“Well, I expect, perhaps, that we ought to have said to them, ‘You are a pack of consummate liars; we do not believe anything you say, and we will prosecute you if we can. But we did not think so; we believed exactly what they said, and we told them we did, and they went home, and no prosecutions were begun on the facts which we had against the Baltimore and Ohio. Then we called, at the request of certain persons in the West, the presidents of all those lines, and they all came. Mr. Marvin Hughitt came; Mr. Bird, of the Milwaukee line, came; in all, 30 or 40; and we had the same sort of an experience meeting again. They all said: ‘We have sinned, but we have got through. Now, gentlemen, just help us to maintain the Act to regulate commerce.’ We said: ‘We will do it.’ And they went home.
“Now, I do not wish to pass any criticism at all on these gentlemen. I have not the slightest doubt that they meant precisely what they said. I think I know something about the difficulties under which they labored; but they did not maintain those rates for a month, probably.... There has not been a time since I have been an Interstate Commerce Commissioner, when, if the traffic officers of the trunk lines between Chicago and the Atlantic seaboard would have consented to tell the truth under oath, the Interstate Commerce Commission would not have stopped the payment of rebates. I have been able to discover no way in which to make them tell the truth.”
“Senator Newlands. In regard to the future, will it not be possible for them to commence again this system of rebates?
“Mr. Prouty. I think they pay rebates now.
“Senator Newlands. You think they do?
“Mr. Prouty. I think they do.”
Victor Morawetz, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Santa Fe, was asked if it would not be wise to require the traffic manager of each railroad, the auditor, and the president, to report every three months on all existing contracts, and that there had been no violations of law, no abuses, so far as they knew, and that they had made diligent inquiry to ascertain if there had been. Morawetz replied that if such a law were passed some men would perjure themselves every three months, and others who were thoroughly honest would simply not take office.[[359]]
Not all the railway officers refuse to tell the truth. There is every reason to believe that Paul Morton and Mr. Biddle of the Santa Fe, for example, spoke the truth in their testimony before the Commission. But the evidence seems to be that the habit of truth telling is not very prevalent. And when the railroad officers determine to prevent publicity either by falsehood or by silence they take care to eliminate documentary evidence that might be used to checkmate them. They destroy their records so that they will be less liable to know anything about the rebates they have paid, and to make it as hard as possible for the Interstate Commerce Commission to get at the facts.