This ruinous diversion of freight seems to have been dependent upon the existence of active competition at Detroit and ceased when the Grand Trunk came to an agreement with the American lines. But there can be no doubt that wherever these cross lines exist there is a strong tendency toward diversion. In the recent hearings of the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce on railway rate regulation, a railroad witness again describes the operation: Mr. VINING. Well, for instance, take the time when I was on the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad. Its connection at the south was at Fort Wayne, with the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago Road. We took lumber out of Michigan and wanted to send it east. We had to compete with lines that went by way of Detroit, that went perhaps through Canada and that in some cases were shorter. Of course, if we wanted to send lumber from Grand Rapids to New York we had to make at least as low a rate as was made by other lines leading from Grand Rapids to New York. That rate might be just the same from Fort Wayne as from Grand Rapids, so that we could not get any more than the low rate from Fort Wayne. We had to go in that case to the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railway and say: "Here are so many carloads of lumber, or so much lumber, at Grand Rapids, a part of which could be shipped to New York if we had through rates that would enable us to move it. These other lines are carrying it for 25 cents a hundred pounds to New York. You join us in a through rate of 25 cents and we can give you some of that business." ... But if I were with a short line and wanted to negotiate with a long one, I should try to put my case just as strongly as possible before the long line. I should say to them: "We can not take 5 per cent. of a rate of 25 cents. It would not pay us. You know that; you can see that"; and they, as business men, would admit it. "Well," I would say, "give us 5 cents a hundred pounds and we will bring the business to you, and if you do not, we can not afford to do it." SENATOR CULLOM. I think in some instances they have stated before us that they gave 25 per cent. Mr. VINING. They might.[293] Whenever the cross road was financially embarrassed, the tendency to diversion was increased. For then, of course, having repudiated fixed charges, the cross line could accept almost any rate as better than the loss of the traffic. And that this was in the past almost a chronic condition in western trunk line territory appears from the fact that eighteen out of the twenty-two roads cutting the Illinois Central between Chicago and Cairo have been in the hands of receivers since 1874.[294]