Wealth against commonwealth

by Henry Demarest Lloyd

Of the 3000 tank-cars of the combination only two carried as little as 20,000 pounds; according to the official figures there were hundreds carrying more than 30,000 pounds, and the weight ran up to 44,250 pounds, but they were shipped at 20,000 pounds.[423] A statement put in evidence showed that shipments in tank-cars actually weighing 1,637,190 pounds had been given to the roads by the combination as weighing only 1,192,655 pounds. Cars whose loads weighed 44,250, 43,700, 43,500, 36,550 pounds were shipped as having on board only 20,000 pounds. At this rate more than one-quarter of the transportation was stolen.

The stockholders of the road were paying an expensive staff of inspectors to detect attempts of shippers to put more in their cars than they paid for, but these shippers paid for three car-loads and shipped from four to six regularly, and were never called to account. This "blind-billing," the Commission said, was "specially oppressive." It was done by the roads in violation of their own rule. It had been mutually agreed among them, and given out to the public, "that tank-cars shall be taken at actual weight."[424]

When Rice was trying to get the roads to allow him to use tank-cars, he asked how the charge on them was calculated. Of those that answered none answered right. None of them gave him the slightest intimation that there was any such practice as "blind-billing." On the contrary, they assured him he would have to pay for every pound he shipped. The Missouri Pacific replied with a "statement not warranted by the facts," as the Commission softly put it. They said they charged for the "actual weight," while, as the Commission shows, they made shipments "regardless of quantity." Rice asked the Newport News and Mississippi Valley Railroad for tank-car rates. "A tank-car is supposed to weigh (carry) 20,000 pounds; if it weighs more, then we will charge for it." At the same time the agent wrote Rice this, he was hauling cars containing 35,000 pounds "with no additional charge." "If this statement was made in good faith," the Commission says, "it is difficult to account for it, and it is not accounted for." "Had he (Rice) provided himself with cars for tank shipment, and been charged as he was told he would be, the discrimination against him would have put success in the traffic out of the question."

When they wanted to turn some new screw in freight rates against Rice, the railroad officials would whip themselves around the stump by printing a new tariff sheet on a type-writer, and tacking it, perhaps, as one of the Interstate Commerce Commission said, on some back door in their offices. This they called "publishing" their rates, as required by the Interstate Commerce law. To Rice, asking for tank-car rates, they would send this printed sheet, showing that if he shipped by tank-car he must pay for every pound, and they held him off with this printed, official, and apparently authentic tariff, though shipping 44,000 for 20,000 pounds for the trust. This was done after the Interstate Commerce Act went into force.[425]

One of these roads assured Rice that its rates had been fixed "by the special authority of the National Railway Commissioners." The fact was, as the Commission declares: "The Commission never investigated coal-oil rates, or gave special authority for their renewal; it never sanctioned any difference in the rates as between tank-car and barrel shipments, and had never, up to the date of this letter, had its attention called to them in any way."[426]

The representative of the combination was called as a witness before the Interstate Commerce Commission. "We pay for exactly what is put in the tanks,"[427] he testified. "In fact, this was never done," says the Commission.[428] Even the railroad officials, who could go any length in "blind-billing" for him, could not "go it blind" on the witness-stand to the extent of supporting such a statement. "Our price per tank-car was not based on any capacity or weight; they have been made simply per tank-car."[429]

"What, generally, is the object of false billing?"

"I suppose to beat the railroad company."[430]

In defence of the discrimination against the barrel shippers, a great deal has been made of danger from fire, damage to cars from leakage, and trouble of handling in the case of barrel shipments, but the best expert opinion which the Interstate Commerce Commission could get went against all these plausible pretences.[431] The manager of the tank line on the Pennsylvania roads showed that the risks were least when the transportation was in barrels. Another reason given for the lower rates on tanks was that they returned loaded with turpentine and cotton-seed oil from the South; but, as the Interstate Commerce Commission shows, this traffic was taken at rates so astonishingly low that it was of little profit;[432] and the commissioner of the Southern Railway and Steamship Association informed the Commission that the return freight business in cotton alone, brought back by the box-cars, to say nothing of other freight, was worth more than these back-loads of turpentine in the tank-cars.[433] It was, consequently, the box-car in which barrel shipments were made, and not the tanks, on which the railroad men should have given a better rate, according to their own reasoning. Turpentine and cotton-seed oil are worth three or four times more than kerosene, and it costs no more, no less, to haul one than the other; but the railroads would carry the cotton-seed oil and turpentine for one-third or one-fourth the rate they charged for kerosene. The Commission could not understand why the rates given by the roads on these back-loads of turpentine and cotton-seed oil were so low. "This charge, for some reason not satisfactorily explained to the Commission, is made astonishingly low when compared with the charge made upon petroleum, although the cotton-seed oil is much the more valuable article."[434]

The newspapers of the South have contained many items of news indicating that the men who have made the oil markets theirs have similarly appropriated the best of the turpentine trade, but nothing is known through adjudicated testimony. The trustees of oil have always denied that there was any connection between them and the Cotton-seed Oil Trust, although the latter shipped its product in the oil trust's cars. The reasons, therefore, for the "extraordinarily low" rates made on the turpentine and cotton-seed oil shipped North in its tank-cars must remain, until further developments, where the Commission leaves it—"not satisfactorily explained." The railroads said they made the rates low for tanks because of the enticing prospects of these back-loads, in which there was no profit to speak of; but they extended these special rates to points from which there was no such back-loading.[435] Rice saw how the cost of sending his oil South could be reduced by bringing back-loads of turpentine at these "astonishingly low" rates. He found there was still turpentine in the South he could buy; but the railroads would not so much as answer his application for rates.