The so-called "midnight tariff" was a strictly legal way of conferring favors upon certain shippers. It was much in evidence during the grain wars between lines serving the Gulf ports about 1903. And it seems to have been a device used at times all over the country. A traffic manager wishing to steal all the business of a large shipper from some competing road, and to build him up at the expense of his rivals, secretly agrees to put into effect a low rate on a given date. The shipper then enters into contracts calling for perhaps several hundred carloads of grain to be delivered at that time. This reduction is publicly filed, perhaps thirty days in advance, with the Interstate Commerce Commission at Washington. But who is to discover it, in the great medley of new tariffs placed on file every day? Yet this is not all. A second tariff, restoring the full rate, is also filed to take effect very shortly,--perhaps only a day,--after the reduction occurs. All these are public, and open to all shippers alike. But only the one who was forewarned is able to take advantage of them. He rushes all his shipments forward while the reduced rates are in effect. Before other competitors can assemble their grain or other goods, the brief reduction has come to an end; and rates are restored to their former figure. The President of the Chicago Great Western Railway has concisely described the commercial effect of one of these midnight tariffs. "A clean profit, he says, over all expenses of one half of a cent per bushel is a satisfactory profit to the middleman; and a guaranteed rate of transportation of even so small a sum as one-quarter of a cent per bushel less than any other middleman can get, will give the man possessing it a monopoly of the business of handling the corn in the district covered by the guaranty. Why? Such are the facilities of trade by means of bills of lading, drafts, telegraphs, banks, etc., that to do an enormous corn trade, the middleman requires only a comparatively small capital to use as a margin. A capital of $50,000 is ample thus to handle 15,000,000 bushels, and with activity, double that amount, per annum. One quarter of a cent per bushel profit on 15,000,000 bushels would amount to $37,500 which is equal to .75 per cent. per annum on the capital employed." A similar device was used by the Burlington road in its dealings with the Missouri river packing houses on export traffic. They signed an agreement making a rate to Germany of twenty-three cents per hundred to last until December 31, 1905. Before the expiration of this time, however, the roads concerned, publicly filed an amended tariff presumably for all shippers of thirty-five cents per hundred. They nevertheless continued the old rate to the packers. This case went to the Supreme Court which decided in 1908 that the device was unlawful and discriminatory.[175]