The Arena | Page 9

continued is within
the cognizance of every well-informed shipper, and are made clear by
such cases as that of Counselman and Peasley, now before the United
States Supreme Court. Counselman and Peasley--one a large shipper
and the other a prominent railway official--refused to testify before a
United States grand jury upon the plea that to do so might criminate
themselves; the federal law making it a criminal offence to make or
benefit by discriminating rates. Counselman had been given rates on
corn, some five cents less per hundred pounds than others, from Kansas
and Nebraska points to Chicago.
The outrageous character of this discrimination will appear when we
reflect that five cents per one hundred pounds is an enormous profit on

corn that the grower has sold at from eighteen to twenty-two cents per
one hundred pounds, and that such a margin would tend to drive every
one but the railway officials and their secret partners out of the trade, as
has practically been the case on many western roads. Doubtless such
rates are sometimes made in order to take the commodity over a certain
line, and there is no divide with the officials; but the effect upon the
competitors of the favored shipper and the public is none the less
injurious, and such practices would not obtain under national
ownership, when railway users would be treated with honesty and
impartiality, which the experience of half a century shows to be
impossible with corporate ownership.
Referring to the rate question in their last report, the Interstate
Commerce Commission says: "If we go no farther than the railroad
managers themselves for information, we shall not find that it is
claimed that railroad service, as a whole, is conducted without unjust
discriminations."
"If rates are secretly cut, or if rebates are given to large shippers, the
fact of itself shows the rates which are charged to the general public are
unreasonable, for they are necessarily made higher than they ought to
be in order to provide for the cut or to pay the rebate."
"If the carrier habitually carries a great number of people free, its
regular rates are made the higher to cover the cost; if heavy
commissions are paid for obtaining business, the rates are made the
higher that the net revenues may not suffer in consequence; if scalpers
are directly or indirectly supported by the railroad companies, the
general public refunds to the companies what the support costs."
The Commission quotes a Chicago railway manager as saying: "Rates
are absolutely demoralized and neither shippers, passengers, railways,
or the public in general make anything by this state of affairs. Take
passenger rates for instance; they are very low; but who benefits by the
reduction? No one but the scalpers.... In freight matters the case is just
the same. Certain shippers are allowed heavy rebates, while others are
made to pay full rates.... The management is dishonest on all sides, and
there is not a road in the country that can be accused of living up to the

interstate law. Of course when some poor devil comes along and wants
a pass to save him from starvation, he has several clauses of the
interstate act read to him; but when a rich shipper wants a pass, why he
gets it at once."
From years of ineffectual efforts on the part of State and national
legislatures and commissions to regulate the rate business, it would
appear that the only remedy is national ownership, which would place
the rate-making power in one body with no inducement to act
otherwise than fairly and impartially, and this would simplify the whole
business and relegate an army of traffic managers, general freight
agents, soliciting agents, brokers, scalpers, and hordes of traffic
association officials to more useful callings while relieving the honest
user of the railway of intolerable burthens.
Under corporate control, railways and their officials have taken
possession of the majority of the mines which furnish the fuel so
necessary to domestic and industrial life, and there are but few
coalfields where they do not fix the price at which so essential an
article shall be sold, and the whole nation is thus forced to pay undue
tribute.
Controlling rates and the distribution of cars, railway officials have
driven nearly all the mine owners who have not railways or railway
officials for partners, to the wall. For instance, in Eastern Kansas, on
the line of the St. Louis & San Francisco Railway Company, were two
coal companies, whose plants were of about equal capacity, and several
individual shippers. The railway company and its officials became
interested in one of the coal companies, and such company was, by the
rebate and other processes, given rates which averaged but forty per
cent. of the rates charged other shippers, the result