"After the Elkins anti-rebate law was passed by Congress in 1903 it was supposed, and the Interstate Commerce Commission reported, that the railroads had substantially abandoned giving rebates. Their good resolutions do not seem, however, to have lasted. The struggle for business enabled the shippers soon to secure a renewal of rebates, or, by ingenious devices advantages equivalent to rebates. Thereupon the Department of Justice began active prosecutions for the enforcement of the law. Fifty-three indictments have been found against hundreds of defendants and covering many hundreds of transactions. There have been fourteen criminal convictions. Fourteen individuals have been fined, to the gross amount of $66,125. Nine corporations have been fined to the amount of $253,000. Thirty-five indictments are ready for trial in their regular order upon the court calendar. The original statute provided only for punishment by fine. Last winter it was amended by providing for punishment by imprisonment, and, if the lines imposed under the original law shall not prove to have stopped the practice, we shall see whether fear of the penitentiary under the amendment will not do so. "Under this statute also it was necessary to sweep away defences which stood as barriers to general prosecution, and in the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad case, decided by the Supreme Court February 19 of this year, and the Milwaukee Refrigerator Transit case, decided in the Seventh Circuit on May 31 of this year, the courts have held that the substance and not the form is to control in the application of the statute, and that, however the transaction may be disguised, an unlawful discrimination can be reached and punished. The way is therefore cleared for all other prosecutions. "The Railroad Rates act, which was the subject of such excited discussion during the last session of Congress, has already justified itself. Since the passage of the act, less than five months ago, there have been more voluntary reductions of rates by our railroads than during the entire nineteen years of the previous life of the Interstate Commerce Commission. On the single day of the 29th of August, 1906, two days before the act went into force, over five thousand notices of voluntary reduction of rates were filed with the Interstate Commerce Commission by the railroads of the United States." _Elihu Root, Speech at Utica, November 1, 1906 (New York Tribune, November 2, 1906)._ COMBINATIONS: A. D. 1903-1906. The "Beef Trust" suits and investigations. The United States v. Swift & Co. et al. Commissioner Garfield’s investigation. Indictment of Armour & Co. and others. Immunity decision of Judge Humphrey. Fines for receiving rebates from railways.