A method of discrimination that has spread enormously in the last year is to pay large salaries or commissions to traffic agents located at important points, on the understanding that these traffic agents shall divide their salaries or commissions with favored shippers. This is much safer than paying rebates or commissions direct to the shipper, and is one of the most difficult forms of discrimination to overcome. In the recent investigations in Wisconsin and other States this method has been found in frequent use, along with underbilling and underweighing of freight, the allowance of cartage or switching charges to favored shippers, permission to hold cars as a means of storage for considerable time without demurrage, midnight tariffs, direct rebates, etc., etc. CHAPTER XXV. TERMINAL RAILROADS. Another method of preference without departing from published rates is the division of rates with private terminal companies or mere switching roads, or roads existing only on paper. A man of large experience in railroad matters said to me not two years ago that “Since injunction suits were instituted by the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1900, published tariffs have been more generally followed. But big concerns build a mile or more of railroad of their own, or incorporate their switch tracks and sidings in a railroad company, and the division of the through rate permits any commission that may be desired. That is the new kind of discrimination that is spreading very rapidly. The effect is to concentrate discrimination and the advantages it gives more and more in the hands of the largest concerns. Formerly any big shipper could get a rebate. Now only those big enough to build a railroad or own an elevator get lower rates than others.” This is a little too strong. There are many other forms of preference still in prevalent use, as we have seen, but there is no doubt that the private railroad and the private car do tend to concentrate discrimination, giving greater and greater advantages to those who need them least. They not only give the private railroads of some shippers a larger percentage of through rates than they give to the private railroads of other shippers, but they refuse to give the railroads of some shippers any division of rates while dividing rates in this way with other shippers in the same business.[251]