Aside from the palpably dishonest secret rebating, the real root of the difficulty with many of the other big shippers beside the Standard Oil Company,--and an abuse moreover exceedingly hard to correct,--is the open adjustment of rates from competing centres of manufacture or distribution in such a way as to confer favors. The Bureau of Corporation's report on the Transportation of Petroleum Products deals fully with this. Relative rates, as above stated, always seem to favor Chicago (Whiting) as against the centres of independent refining such as Cleveland, Pittsburg, or Toledo. Formerly, before the great refinery was established in 1890 at Whiting,--which, by the way, produces one-third of all the kerosene used in the United States,--the roads from these centres made joint through rates all over the country. They still do so on many other commodities. But on petroleum products they have been withdrawn. The result is that everywhere, except where they can secure entrance by water, the disability in rates against the independent refiner is most effective. That much the same conditions prevail in other lines of business is affirmed on the highest authority. The _Railway Age Gazette_ has repeatedly protested against the pressure which is now brought to bear against the carriers by such organizations as the Illinois Manufacturers' Association to substitute open but discriminatory local rates for the old secret favors upon which the great shippers throve for so many years. Fortunately, however, this situation in some cases relieves the Federal government of the burden of detection of maladjustments of this sort. For the communities aggrieved are constantly on the watch to protect their interests against rival cities. This factor clearly appears in the sugar and cement lighterage cases in 1908.[183] Carriers at New York in order to equalize rates with carriers serving Philadelphia refineries, grant "accessorial allowances" for the use of lighters or for cartage, in order, as they aver, to overcome the disability against their clients. But Philadelphia shippers are ever on the alert to detect such favors given at New York; and substantially aid the government in eradicating the evil. In the grain elevator allowance cases, likewise, at Omaha and Council Bluffs in 1906-1909, not only unfavored shippers at these points but St. Louis grain merchants as a body, intervened as complainants against the system. The powerful motive of self-interest thus invoked is of great service.