Note 176 — Chapter XVII · THE ELKINS ACT AND ITS EFFECTS.

More complaints per annum have been filed with the Commission since the Elkins Act took effect than were filed before the act was passed. The reports of the I. C. C. show 145 formal complaints filed in 1903 and 1904, carrying the total to 789, and 888 informal complaints, carrying the total to 3223, making the whole number 1033 in the two years, and 4012 since 1887—more than 25 percent of the complaints having been filed in the last two years which constitute only 11 percent of the time covered by the reports of the Commission. Out of the 62 suits entered in 1904, 50 charge unjust discrimination of serious character, and nearly all the rest involve discrimination in some form. The complaints entered for amicable adjustment also relate in large part to cases of discrimination between persons and places, refusal to furnish cars, unreasonable delay, unfair classification, discrimination in track facilities, unfair estimate of weights, allowing competitors to underbill, refusal of the Transcontinental Passenger Association to grant the American Federation of Labor the usual special convention rate for their meeting at San Francisco, refusal to route shipments as ordered by shippers, relatively excessive rates on vegetables, lumber, lead, drugs, corn products, coal, iron, shoes, leather, etc., violations of the long and short haul clause, and outright refusal to accept shipments, besides a number of complaints of overcharges, and rates alleged to be unreasonable per se.

Adding the figures for 1905, which have come to hand since the above was written, we find that more than double the number of complaints of discrimination have been made to the Interstate Commerce Commission in the last three years, since the Elkins Law was passed, than in any equal period before. The complaints filed in 1903, 1904, and 1905 constitute more than a third of the whole number of complaints from the beginning of the Commission in 1887. The average number of complaints per year from 1887 to 1902 inclusive was 186, while the yearly average for 1903–1905 is 534—more than double, nearly threefold—and five-sixths of the suits entered charge facts that constitute discrimination of serious character, and nearly all the rest involve discrimination in some form.