to become a
competitor of one of its connecting lines.

From another case decided by the Interstate Commerce Commission it
appeared that the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway Company
charged for blocks intended for wagon-hubs, and upon which only so much
labor had been expended as was necessary to put them in condition, a
higher rate than for lumber, claiming that such blocks were unfinished
wagon material and were therefore, as articles of manufacture, subject
to higher charges than raw material. The commission justly held that
these blocks were as much to be regarded as raw material as the boards
from which wagon-boxes are made.

In the classification of the Southern Railway and Steamship Association
pearline was placed in the fourth class, with a rate of 73 cents per
hundred pounds, and common soap in the sixth class, with a rate of 49
cents per hundred pounds. This latter article, when shipped by large
manufacturers, enjoyed besides a special rate of 33 cents per
hundredweight. Pearline and soap are competitive; there is no
appreciable difference between them as regards the cost of
transportation; but one commands a higher price in the market than the
other, and upon this fact solely did the railroad company base its
alleged right to levy upon pearline a transportation tax 120 per cent.
in excess of that levied upon soap, though the service rendered by the
company was the same in either case. The commission held that the
discrimination made by the "special rate" of the Southern Railway and
Steamship Association between pearline and common soap was unjust, and
ordered that it be discontinued and that, with common soap in the sixth
class, pearline be placed in the fifth.

For years the rate from Indianapolis to New York was the same for corn
as for its direct products, such as ground corn, cracked corn, corn
meal, hominy and corn feed. Such a tariff made it possible for Western
mills to compete with similar mills that had been established in the
East, since a discrimination of 5 per cent. was sufficient to absorb
three or four times the profits of any Western mill. It was shown by the
evidence produced that the actual cost of transportation was
substantially the same for direct corn products as for the raw corn. The
only defense which the railroad company could make for this
discrimination was that in the carriage of raw corn they had to meet
lake competition. The weakness of this argument will be perceived