Note 216 — Chapter XXI · MIDNIGHT TARIFFS AND ELEVATOR FEES.
Reading edition
Mr. Moffat was asked if he thought the allowances ought to be made. He said: “I think that it ought to be made to the big shippers. I think the man who ships 100,000 bushels a month ought to get a little better deal than the man who ships only 1,000 bushels a year.”
Commissioner Cockrell replied: “There is where I think you are entirely wrong. No government could live under such a condition. The rich would soon absorb everything and the small man would be wiped out of existence. The whole business we are on now started from a railroad giving a man a rebate. The minute the railroad does a thing like that it opens the way to a swindling petty graft and bigger grafting and crooked work. It is wrong, all wrong. It is so wrong that nobody knows what to call it. Down in Louisville they call it a ‘swag.’ Here you call it an ‘allowance.’ It is all wrong.”