[157] Senate (Elkins) Committee, 1905, testimony of Mr. Bird, Traffic Manager of the St. Paul road. This is best measured, of course, by revenue per ton mile, chap. XII, _infra_.

[160] More in detail at p. 318, _infra_. Also Hammond, Rate Theories of the I. C. C., 1911, p. 32.

Railroads: Rates and Regulations — Part 127

[161] U. P. Tea Co.; I.C.C. Rep., No. 1569, 1908.

Railroads: Rates and Regulations — Part 127

Rebates and monopoly, with attendant danger to carriers, 185.-- Personal discrimination defined, 188.--Distinction between rebating and general rate cutting, 188.--Early forms of rebates, 189.--Underbilling, underclassification, etc., 190.--Private car lines, 192.--More recent forms of rebating described, 195.--Terminal and tap-lines, 196.--Midnight tariffs, 197.--Outside transactions, special credit, etc., 198.--Distribution of coal cars, 199.--Standard Oil Company practices, 200.--Discriminatory open adjustments from competing centres, 202.--Frequency of rebating since 1900, 204-6.--The Elkins Law of 1903, 205.--Discrimination since 1906, 207.--The grain elevation cases, 211.--Industrial railroads once more, 212.

Railroads: Rates and Regulations — Part 127

The philosophy of rebating has perhaps never been better described than in the following quotation from the Cullom Committee investigation of 1886:

"Mr. WICKER. I am speaking now of when I was a railroad man. Here is quite a grain point in Iowa, where there are five or six elevators. As a railroad man, I would try and hold all those dealers on a 'level keel,' and give them all the same tariff rate. But suppose there was a road five or six or eight miles across the country, and those dealers should begin to drop in on me every day or two and tell me that that road across the country was reaching within a mile or two of our station and drawing to itself all the grain. You might say that it would be the just and right thing to do to give all the five or six dealers at this station a special rate to meet that competition through the country. But, as a railroad man, I can accomplish the purpose better by picking out one good, smart, live man, and, giving him a concession of three or four cents a hundred, let him go there and scoop the business. I would get the tonnage, and that is what I want. But if I give it to the five it is known in a very short time. I can illustrate that better by a story told by Mr. Vanderbilt when he and his broker had a deal in stocks. The broker came in and said, 'Mr. Vanderbilt, I would like to take in my friend John Smith.' Mr. Vanderbilt said, 'Let us see how this will work. Here are you and myself in this deal now. We take in John Smith; that makes a hundred and eleven. I guess I won't do it.' When you take in these people at the station on a private rebate you might as well make it public and lose what you intend to accomplish. You can take hold of one man and build him up at the expense of the others, and the railroad will get the tonnage."