CONTROL THE TRUSTS BY CONGRESS 213 



the tariff charges imposed upon smaller dealers and the general 

 public. This injustice prevailed to such an extent and for so 

 long a time that most of the smaller shippers had been driven 

 from the field, and the business formerly enjoyed by them ab- 

 sorbed by a limited number of persons, who received secret 

 and preferential rates. In a word, there was practically only 

 one buyer on each railway system, and the illegal advantages 

 he secured from the carrier gave him a monopoly of the grain 

 trade on the line with which his secret compact was made. 



In the earlier period of this discriminating practice it is 

 probably true that the producer obtained a price for his grain 

 slightly in excess of its market value at the place of shipment ; 

 but that result followed only during the short time that the 

 non-favored dealer continued in business. When he was 

 forced to the wall, as he soon was, the only buyer whom the 

 producer could reach was the party who had bargained with 

 the carrier for an unlawful trade. Thus competition in the 

 grain business was destroyed and the price actually realized 

 by the farmer was frequently less than the proper market 

 value. A favored middleman, by connivance with the rail- 

 road, monopolized the grain products of a large area of coun- 

 try, and virtually fixed the price both to the producer and 

 the consumer. 



It was an odious condition. Nor does this describe the 

 full measure of wrongdoing. It reached the centers of trade 

 and affected related industries with more or less disaster. In 

 Kansas City, for example, it was asserted that local dealers 

 had been excluded from participation in the grain trade ; that 

 their elevators for the storage and transshipment of grain, 

 built at great expense for the demands of an important market, 

 had been deprived of business, and that large numbers of 

 laborers had lost employment and remained in idleness, solely 

 because of the diversion of business from its natural channels 

 as the result of this forbidden monopoly in the purchase and 

 transportation of grain. 



The board of trade of that city presented a complaint to 

 the interstate commerce commission, and that body con- 

 ducted an investigation which disclosed, with convincing 

 particularity and detail, the facts already summarized. That 



