2 9 z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



carried seven hundred miles more than a direct haul ! Surely one 

 would say that rates devised so loosely as to render Mr. Mack's plan 

 worth adopting discredit the officials responsible for them. Among 

 the remarkable cases of discrimination proved were the following : 

 Babbitt & Co., soap-manufacturers in New York, ascertained that 

 Crouse & Co., of Syracuse, had a special rate of eight cents per box 

 over the New York Central road ; Babbitt & Co. asked for a similar 

 reduction, which was refused, the rate charged them being twelve 

 cents to Syracuse, and this while their shipments over the New York 

 Central and Hudson River Railroads aggregated 1,34G tons in the 

 year preceding the session of the committee. In the winter of 1877 

 Jesse Hoyt & Co. and David Dows & Co., of New York, two large 

 grain firms, controlled the market by having obtained freights from 

 the West two and a half to five cents per hundred less than any of 

 their competitors. Their facilities for freight exceeded their purchas- 

 ing power, so they actually sublet their privileges to other houses in 

 the trade. 



Towering far above all the wrongs under the head of discrimina- 

 tions ever perpetrated by railroads must be placed those committed in 

 favor of the Standard Oil Company. This monopoly, the strongest 

 of the kind in the world, controls the production of petroleum in the 

 United States, the second largest export of the country ; its relations 

 with the railroads are such that it obtains freighting at an immense 

 reduction from the terms charged to other customers of the roads. In 

 August, 1879, the Erie and New York Central roads charged the 

 Standard Company about ten cents for hauling a barrel of three hun- 

 dred and ninety pounds somewhat more than four hundred miles, 

 empty cars having to be hauled back over the lines. Contrast this 

 with the charge of forty-five cents for bringing a can of ten gallons 

 of milk weighing ninety pounds but sixty miles ! The proportions are 

 as 1 to 130. From January to October, 1879, the total shipments from 

 the oil-regions were 12,900,240 barrels. All shipments to the sea- 

 board might have borne one dollar more per barrel than they did, yet 

 all these millions of dollars were lost to the roads by a policy for 

 which their officers are accountable. The Central Pacific Railroad 

 Company is another against which discriminations of an unwarrant- 

 able character have been proved. While one shipper was charged 65 

 cents from Ogden to Toano, another shipper was charged $3.35 for the 

 same service. Vegetables were carried for different firms at rates as 

 various as 55 cents and $1.36. Through rates from New York to San 

 Francisco were to some shippers one half those charged to others. 

 The complainants take good ground when they declare that discrimi- 

 nations in favor of particular localities and firms create deficiencies 

 which shippers generally are taxed to equalize ; and, as mercantile 

 competition becomes yearly more severe, the unjust discriminations of 

 railroads unfairly discount the legitimate returns of business enter- 



