The extreme subtlety of personal favoritism was recently brought to light in connection with the selling price of coal in the little town of Durham, North Carolina.[193] Complaint was entered that a certain retailer was charging but five dollars a ton while his competitors were unable to dispose of theirs at a profit for less than six dollars. The explanation offered, that this person employing no bookkeeper and, paying no rent, was enabled to do this because of these savings, proved inadequate. Investigation developed the fact that no direct preference from railroads existed, but that there were, nevertheless, various peculiar features as to division of rates which invited further examination. Thus, for example, while the Norfolk & Western received $30.80 for hauling a carload of coal 160 miles, the Durham & South Carolina Railroad received $24.80 for hauling the same car one mile. This little railroad was owned by a lumber company which seemed in effect to have set up the defendant coal merchant in business. An arrangement between this little switching road and the Seaboard Air Line, as well as the Norfolk & Western, also favored the Durham & Southern. The key to the situation lay in the fact that the Dukes,--powerful financial interests controlling the American Tobacco Company, the Southern Power Company and large cotton mills,--also controlled the Durham & Southern through the lumber company. The Seaboard Air Line, therefore, when it gave to this little switching road for a twenty-mile haul, about forty per cent. of its division on through business, surreptitiously conferred a heavy bonus upon its little connection. It must have lost money under such a division of rates. The only conclusion possible is that this little railroad was specially favored in order to purchase the goodwill of financiers controlling a large traffic in other lines of business. The rebate, however, was not given to the American Tobacco Company, but constituted a comfortable profit "on the side" for powerful interests in its management.