when
it is remembered that Indianapolis is 154 miles from the nearest
lake-shipping point. There is but little doubt that this discrimination
was made by the railroad company because it was to its interest to haul
the raw corn from the West to the East and to return it in altered
form. Railroads care, as a rule, little for a waste of force, if such
waste is to their own advantage.

In another case brought before the commission in 1889 it was shown that
the "Official Classification" placed common soap in carload lots in
Class V, while such articles as coffee, pickles, salted and smoked fish
in boxes or packages, rice, starch in barrels or boxes, sugar, cereal
line and cracked wheat are placed in Class VI. The chief reply of the
railroad companies to this complaint was that soap was justly placed in
Class V because the components from which it is in part made stood in
Class V.

In another case it was shown that one kind of soap was burdened with a
higher transportation tax than another, irrespective even of cost,
because one had been advertised as toilet and the other as laundry soap.

The principle of charging what the traffic will bear is well illustrated
by the relative rates on patent medicines and ale and beer, as
maintained by the Official Classification.

In a complaint made by a prominent manufacturer of proprietary medicines
against the New York Central and other roads, it was shown that the
complainant's products were shipped at owner's risk, and that they were
in bulk and intrinsic value similar to ale and beer, but that in spite
of these analogies the former were rated as first-class and the latter
as third-class goods, simply because they retailed at a higher price.

Another unwarrantable discrimination is that in favor of live stock and
against dressed beef. While Mr. Fink, the commissioner of the Trunk Line
Pool, himself admitted that the cost of carrying dressed beef from
Chicago to New York was only 6-1/4 cents per 100 pounds in excess of
the cost of hauling live stock, the trunk lines maintained on dressed
beef a rate 75 per cent. higher than that on live cattle. The railroad
companies asserted that this was due to those people in the East whose
living depended on the live-stock interest. The railroads have in this
assumed a paternalism which would not be tolerated even in the
Government. To protect the East, railroads will not permit the West to
engage in new industries.

The position which the