Unlike the preceding instance, most of the Standard's rebates have been, in fact if not technically, secret. Perhaps the most flagrant case occurred in the rates from Whiting to the southeastern states. The Bureau of Corporations estimated that $70,000 a year was saved by this device; and all competition from independent sources was eliminated within that territory. The Illinois Central and Southern roads cross at an obscure point in Tennessee known as Grand Junction. This was made a centre of distribution for the entire South.[182] But the rate under which the oil moved,--and in one given month 169 carloads were thus carried,--was given on a special tariff, publicly filed at Washington, to be sure, but prescribing the rate, not from Whiting but from Dalton, Illinois, to Grand Junction, Tennessee. Dalton was an almost unknown station, near the refinery. Of course any other shipper who happened to know of it, and who happened to have oil to ship from Dalton to Grand Junction, could have had the same rate of thirteen cents a hundred pounds. But he would find it moved over a roundabout route, over four different connecting lines, instead of over the rails of a single company. As against this rate of thirteen cents, the only routes known to the Ohio independent producers charged from nineteen to twenty-nine and one-half cents per hundred pounds. Meantime the Standard's oil was by this devious means reaching every point in the South at prices which no competitor could hope to meet. In one case, the oil going by way of Grand Junction, travelled over one thousand miles when the direct route from Chicago was only a little over five hundred miles. The adjustment was everywhere such that, even on the commonly known tariffs, Whiting enjoyed a special advantage over the sources of independent oil. Atlanta, Georgia, is only 733 miles by short line and 1003 miles by way of Grand Junction from Whiting. Toledo, with its independent refineries, is distant only 687 miles. Yet despite this fact, the commonly known rates were shown to be, from Whiting, 33.2 cents as against 47.5 cents from Toledo. So, even without the Grand Junction contrivance, the Standard was seemingly favored more than enough. It should be added, in conclusion, that while the Grand Junction rate was publicly filed, its discriminatory character stands proven by the fact that all the actual shipments were "blind billed;" that is to say, no local agent knew what was the rate actually paid. Such blind bills of lading are photographically reproduced in the report above named. Moreover the ill repute of the transaction was indicated by the prompt cancellation of the rate when discovered in 1905. But in the meantime it had done its work, and fixed monopoly prices for an indispensable product over a quarter of the territory of the United States.