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business as can possibly be obtained in a fair and open manner." The agreement of the Southern Railway & Steamship Association was renewed yearly, and most of the contracts for division of business were made for a year at a time. Each road tried to carry as much freight as possible, so that, when the next contract came to be made, it might demand with some show of reason a larger share of the business. It is competition of this sort that is advantageous, not competition with little or no regard to the cost of doing the work.

HENRY HUDSON

VI

UNREASONABLE RATES

THE CINCINNATI FREIGHT BUREAU CASE1

CLEMENTS, Commissioner:

The complaints in these cases, which were heard and may be disposed of together, were filed, respectively, by the Freight Bureau of the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce and the Chicago Freight Bureau. The former will hereinafter be referred to as the Cincinnati case, and the latter as the Chicago case.

In both complaints, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston and contiguous territory, are designated "Eastern Seaboard territory;" Knoxville and Chattanooga, Tenn., Rome and Atlanta, Ga., Birmingham, Anniston and Selma, Ala., Meridian, Miss., and contiguous territory, "Southern territory;" and Cincinnati, Ohio, Louisville, Ky., Indianapolis and Evansville, Ind., Chicago and Cairo, Ill., St. Louis, Mo., and contiguous territory, "Central territory." These designations will be so applied in this opinion.

The general ground of complaint in the Cincinnati case is that the rates of freight established by the defendant carriers from the Eastern Seaboard and Central territories, respectively, to Southern territory, "unjustly discriminate in favor of the merchants and manufacturers whose business is located and transacted in Eastern Seaboard territory and against the merchants and manufacturers whose business is located and transacted in Cincinnati and other points in Central territory." It is stated that "the burden of the complaint lies against the relation which exists between the current rates of freight on manufactured

1 Decided May 29, 1894. Interstate Commerce Reports, Vol. VI, pp. 195–256. Overruled by the Supreme Court, vide, p. 187, infra. The final disposition of it at p. 198, infra. The entire history of this suggestive case may be traced by means of the index in Ripley's Railroads: Rates and Regulation.

articles and merchandise" (numbered classes) "from Eastern Seaboard territory to Southern territory, and the current rates of freight exacted upon like commodities when shipped from Central territory to the South, and against the unfair basis of general construction of the tariffs under consideration whereby the rates charged for transportation of commodities classified under numbered classes' bear a much higher percentage relation to the rates from New York than do the rates on commodities enumerated under the lettered classes" (food products and similar heavy traffic); and it is alleged, "that this improper relation between rates has the effect of restraining and impeding the growth of productive industries in Central territory and encouraging and promoting similar industries in Eastern Seaboard territory, and is the direct result of an agreement established by convention between the officers of defendants, whereby in order to secure stability in rates and to prevent competition between the lines leading respectively from the Eastern Seaboard and Central territories to the South, it was decided to secure to the Eastern lines and Eastern territory the traffic in merchandise and manufactured articles and to the Western territory the traffic in food products and similar heavy commodities." In support of these charges as to the alleged "improper relation between the rates from Eastern territory and Central territory to Southern territory, and between those on the numbered and lettered classes, tabular statements are given of the distances, and class rates from leading points in the Eastern and Central territories to the points named above in Southern territory and of the percentage relation borne by rates and distances from Cincinnati to those from New York.

The complaint in the Chicago case contains similar tabular statements and charges, made applicable to Chicago, and in addition calls in question the reasonableness in themselves of the through rates from Chicago to Southern territory by the averments that traffic between Chicago and the Southern territory is through traffic and it is unjust to Chicago that rates from that point should be exacted by defendants based upon unreasonably high rates between Cincinnati and other Ohio river crossings

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