DENIAL OF FAIR FACILITIES.
The refusal to furnish cars in fair proportion is a familiar form of
discrimination all through this period, usually in combination with
other forms of preference. In Kansas, on the line of the St. Louis and
San Francisco Railway, were two coal companies whose plants were of
about equal capacity, and several individual shippers. The railway and
its officials became interested in one of the coal companies, and by
rebate and other process it was given rates which averaged only forty
percent of the rates charged other shippers. The result was that all the
other shippers were driven out of business, part of them being
hopelessly ruined before giving up the struggle. In addition to rate
discrimination the railway practised gross favoritism in the
distribution of cars. For example, during one period of 564 days, as was
proven in court, the road delivered to the Pittsburg Coal Company 2,371
empty cars to be loaded with coal, although such company had sale for,
and capacity to produce and load, during the same period, more than
15,000 cars. During the same time this railway company delivered to the
Rogers Coal Company, in which the railway company and C. W. Rogers, its
vice-president and general manager, were interested, no less than 15,483
coal cars, while 466 were delivered to individual shippers. In other
words, the coal company owned in large part by the railway and its
officials, was given 82 percent of all the facilities to get coal to
market, although the other shippers had much greater combined capacity
than the Rogers Coal Company.
During the last four months of the period named, and when the Pittsburg
Coal Company had the plant, force, and capacity to load thirty cars per
day, they received an average of one and one-fourth cars per day,
resulting as was intended, in the utter ruin of a prosperous business
and the involuntary sale of the property, while the railway coal
company, the railway officials, and the accommodating friends who
operated the Rogers Coal Company, made vast sums of money; and when all
other shippers had thus been driven off the line the price of coal was
advanced to the consumer.
Another railway interested in a coal mine furnished cars in abundance to
that mine and to others that would sell their product to the mining
company in which the railway was interested, but systematically failed
to furnish cars to other operators.[84] One operator, after being forced
for years in this way to sell his product to the railway mining company
at a very low price, was obliged to build a railway of his own in order
to reach other lines of railroad and so have a fighting chance for cars.
In Arkansas a coal mine owned by the Gould interests was able to ship
its product to market at very low rates, while the owners of an
adjoining mine were forced to haul their coal to the same market in
wagons because the rates charged them from the coal railway were so high
as to absorb the whole value of the coal at destination.
A big capitalist in the West got hold of great oil fields on the Pacific
slope, wonderful prospects, contracts to supply big cities, etc. Some
one told him he had better see the railroads before he made his
contracts. He thought the transportation question would be all right and
went ahead. When he got his contracts made and wanted to ship the oil,
he asked for cars, and then he found the transportation question was not
all right. He could not get the cars.
Sometimes a railroad has arbitrarily refused to haul goods to certain
consignees. A case of this kind came before the Texas Railway Commission
in the case of the Independent Compress _v._ Chicago, Rock Island and
Texas Railway Company. The Bowie Compress, located at the same station
with the Independent, had some sort of pull which caused the railroad to
refuse to haul cotton to that station unless consigned to the Bowie
Compress. The railway also allowed compression charges out of the
through rate on cotton shipped to the Bowie Compress, refused freight
from points of origin, and reshipped the cotton from the Bowie press at
through rates, while refusing such concessions to others.[85]
The refusal to deliver at a certain place may be as effective sometimes
as the refusal to deliver at all. When in 1890 Mr. Nelson Morris tried
to establish competitive stock yards in Chicago to get rid of the graft
of the Union Stock Yards owned largely by railway interests, the
Vanderbilts being in the lead, his enterprise was loudly applauded by
the stock raisers of the West; but the railroads made short work of
Morris. They simply refused to deliver to his yards the cars shipped
there. They did not recognize any such place as the Morris yards and
calmly hauled all cars to the old terminal. If Mr. Morris wanted them he
must come and get them and pay switching charges. This ruined the
venture.
Big shippers may be given an undue advantage by excessive difference
between the rates on carloads and less than carloads.[86] On June 29,
1898, the Western railroads advanced their less-than-carload rates to
the Pacific Coast to a minimum difference of 50 cents a cwt. above the
carload rate; and “on a great many commodities the difference is greater
than the profit on the goods.”[87] The Interstate Commission regards a
moderate reduction on carload shipments as fair, but will not sanction
lower rates for cargo or train-load quantities than for carloads.[88]