Note 399 — Chapter XXXIII · FIXING RATES BY PUBLIC AUTHORITY.

President Tuttle agrees with the Commission on this point. In his testimony to the Senate Committee, 1905, he said that the company’s books would not show rebates, etc., “unless they wanted them to. I will say to you frankly that if a company intended to evade the law by giving rebates and commissions they would find some way of so covering them up that all the experts on the face of the earth could not find them. If you assume at the beginning that the railroad management is deliberately going into violations of the law it is not going to make records of those things which can ever be found out.” (Sen. Com. 1905, p. 952.) But President Tuttle said: “There is ample opportunity to ascertain if rebates exist. There are always opportunities. The competitive shipper knows about it. There is always enough of the loose end hanging out somewhere so that if the Interstate Commerce Commission or whoever is authorized to move in those matters will take the time to proceed upon the lines of information that they can always get they will be easily ferreted out and punished. I do not think there is any evidence that the Interstate Commerce Commission has tried to enforce the Elkins Law.” (Same, p. 951.) Shippers have, however, often stated that they felt sure some concession was being made to their rivals, but they could not tell what, and in many cases there is simply a vague suspicion; no one knows whether others are paying the tariff rates or not. And railroad men have admitted, as in the B. & A. case, that no shipper knew what rates others were getting.