460 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



roads, such, a law would not prevent discrimination, but actually 

 compel it. Let us say that a shipper in New York desires to 

 send goods all-rail to Chicago, and that he has a choice of three 

 all-rail routes (as a matter of fact he has a choice of thirteen, but 

 we will use the lesser number). One of these all-rail routes runs by 

 a right of way laid out some forty years ago, under the then exist- 

 ing systems of engineering, climbs heavy grades, crosses the Alle- 

 ghany Mountains twice, and makes the trip about one thousand 

 miles. A second, laid out some twenty years later, has better 

 grades, but crosses the mountains only once. A third runs by 

 almost a series of bee-lines, has a grade nowhere exceeding one 

 per cent, and was constructed and capitalized at less than a fourth 

 part of the accumulated capital and indebtedness of the other 

 two. Now, left to themselves, can these three railways, with dif- 

 ferent amounts of fixed charges, interest, dividends, and operating 

 expenses to pay annually, carry for the same tariffs at the same 

 rates to the same points, and all pay expenses ? Ought they, in 

 justice to the investors, whose money built them (and who are 

 portions of the people quite as much as are the shippers over the 

 line or the members of State Legislatures), to make the same 

 rates for equivalent services ? From the standpoint of the gen- 

 tleman who believes that railways should meet their fixed charges, 

 and all other expenses — should pay their bills, that is to say, like 

 ordinary mortals ! — from this standpoint, I say, it would seem as if 

 a difference in rates to Chicago, over these three all-rail lines, was 

 inevitable. And so it was, up to the invention of the pooling sys- 

 tem : each road made its own tariff -schedules independently, and 

 naturally the tariff of each was different from that of the others. 

 But, without supposing that they were committing a crime, and 

 as yet unconvinced of sin, these three railways, let us say, came 

 together, and determined to make a single rate to Chicago for all 

 business received by each of the three lines ; these receipts to be 

 pooled and divided something upon the basis outlined above. 

 Even had they proceeded upon a basis of the single actual re- 

 ceipts to each for solicited business, there could be no difference 

 to the public either way ; but they chose to consider the most 

 complicated problem of a single tariff divided upon the items of 

 expenditure, outlay, and cost described above. What resulted ? 

 Simply that there was (as the interstate commerce law says there 

 shall be) no discrimination. But when the interstate commerce 

 law, while keeping the word of promise to the ear by saying there 

 should be no discrimination, broke it to the hope by saying there 

 should be no pool, what resulted ? Why, in the case of these 

 three roads, a discrimination in favor of one third against two 

 thirds ! For, when each of these three roads makes its own tariff, 

 of course, the road having the smallest fixed charges to pay makes 



