All parties concerned are probably agreed in the hope of eliminating the rate war forever. But there is not the same evidence of either an intent or desire on the part of railway officials to get rid of what, from a public point of view, is even more insidious and unjust; that is to say, the secret concession of favors to a few chosen large shippers. General rate wars, as will later appear, are probably a thing of the past.[164] But secret rebating seems, on the other hand, to be an evil which must be combatted vigorously and un-intermittently in order to uproot it as a feature of American industrial life. And of course it must cease. For it is the most prolific source of evil known in transportation. It has probably had more to do with the creation of great industrial monopolies than any other single factor. The first feature of any reform of our intolerable "trust" situation, must be to keep the rails open on absolutely even terms to all shippers, large or small.
The keynote of discrimination is, as we have said, the creation of monopoly, or, at all events, of so large an aggregation of shipments, that a profitable partnership between the shipper and the railroad results. This is clear in recent indictments which charge that the railroads concerned, having selected one large firm of forwarders in New York and Chicago are giving them a monopoly in respect of all imports. In the case of the great beef packers, the railroad having once built up a shipper by favored rates, may continue in the enjoyment of this concentrated tonnage with greater security and profit than if it moved in a multitude of small shipments by numerous competitors. Of course there is another less common form of rebating which, so far as its profit is concerned, is limited to the particular dishonest railway official who arranges the matter. Such favoritism as this, however, represents a loss to the company; and has always been stamped out by the carriers when discovered. The principal form above described, is much more difficult to uproot. And yet for some reason, it is a distinctively American abuse. European countries seem never to have suffered from it, to any such degree as has the United States. It is, as has just been said, perhaps the most iniquitous, the most persistent and until very recently the most nearly ineradicable evil connected with the great business of transportation.