The International Harvester Company, popularly known as the Harvester Trust, was formed in 1902 to consolidate several big concerns manufacturing farm machinery. It organized the “Illinois Northern Railroad Company” and turned over to it the 17 miles of switching track in the private grounds of its Chicago works. Till the end of 1903 this vest-pocket railroad handled the cars of the Trust for a switching charge of $1 to $3.50 per car, the average haul being about 4 miles. For the works at Plano, another microscopic railway company, “The Chicago, West Pullman and Southern Railroad,” with 4 miles of track, was organized to switch the cars of the Harvester Trust. The International Harvester Company owns these two railroads. Its officials are the officials of those railroads in most instances. And it absolutely controls the operations of the roads.[254] In January, 1904, contracts were made for the division of rates to the Missouri River. The Santa Fe, C. B. & Q., Rock Island, Chicago and Alton, Great Western, Chicago and North Western, Wisconsin Central, Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul, etc.—practically all the railroads going west—allowed the private Trust railroads a division of 20 percent of the through rate with the Missouri River as a maximum, amounting to $12 on an ordinary car of 20,000 lbs. of farm machinery going from Chicago to any point in Kansas or Nebraska or the Far West. The Interstate Commerce Commission says: “Since the International Harvester Company owns the Illinois Northern Railroad, a payment to the railroad is a payment to its owner, the International Harvester Company. When a line transporting a carload of traffic from Chicago to the Missouri River pays the Illinois Northern Railroad $12 for switching that car from the McCormick works to its iron, it gives the International Harvester Company a preference of at least $8.50 over what any other shipper of that same carload would be obliged to pay.... And there is no limit in law to the extent to which this shipper may be preferred to other shippers in this way.”[255] In a suit brought July 11, 1905, by R. B. Swift, a former officer of the McCormick branch of the Harvester Trust, it is declared that up to September 30, 1902, the Trust received rebates from the railroads amounting to $500,000 through the West Pullman switch road, and over $3,000,000 through the Illinois Northern switch road.