The elevation cases concerning the legitimacy of a special payment for unloading grain in private elevators, have been under dispute for years. Their validity has recently been affirmed by the Supreme Court in an important decision in 1911.[194] This litigation illustrates the difficulty of defining rebates as an expression of personal favoritism. In 1899, the Union Pacific Railroad made a contract with Peavey & Company at Council Bluffs to erect an elevator and to transfer grain for a charge of one and one-quarter cents a hundred pounds. This arrangement was objected to by competing railroads on the ground that it gave compensation to a private concern, engaged in general grain business for the handling of its own property. The Union Pacific insisted that the expedient was necessary and proper as a means for promptly unloading its cars at Omaha. The Commission, after investigation, sanctioned the contract. In 1907, the matter again came before the Commission upon complaint of other railroads competing with the Union Pacific along the Missouri river. It was alleged that the continuance of the elevator allowance by the Union Pacific would virtually compel all other roads to make similar allowances. Still the Commission adhered to its former conclusion that undue discrimination did not result. The practice, however, gradually spread until all the roads at Missouri river points put in an allowance of three-fourths of one cent as an elevator charge. This brought forth a complaint from the lines at St. Louis that traffic was being diverted from that point as a result; and the Commission, once more considering the matter, held that the practice was prejudicial to public interest. Conditions, in fact, had changed, mainly through the increase of through shipments to the East without transfer at the Missouri river. The Commission, therefore, held that when such transfer took place, it was for the accommodation of local grain merchants, who ought to pay for the service rendered. At this stage of the proceedings, the matter went to the Supreme Court of the United States upon appeal. The decision finally upheld the Commission, in holding that the payment of an elevation allowance was not unlawful, but that if paid to one elevator, it must be paid to all. The bearing of this case upon the larger issue, of payments by railroads for special services rendered by, shippers cannot fail to be of great importance in the future.