“MR. LEEDS. Before. “COMMISSIONER PROUTY. Are your agents authorized to make that discount? “MR. LEEDS. No; they are not. “COMMISSIONER PROUTY. Where is the agreement made, and with whom? “MR. LEEDS. Myself. “COMMISSIONER PROUTY. Do your agents there know anything about it? “MR. LEEDS. I do not think they know what it is. They may know that something of that kind is going on, but not what it amounts to. “COMMISSIONER CLEMENTS. How does the shipper know that he can get this $25 and $35 back? “MR. LEEDS. Well, he probably could not ship if he did not know it. “COMMISSIONER CLEMENTS. How does he find it out? You say your agents there do not inform him. “MR. LEEDS. Well, I spent about three months there in the past year. “COMMISSIONER CLEMENTS. You have advised them all that that was done, have you? “MR. LEEDS. We sought the business.” Mr. Watson appears to have received on California shipments about $50,000 a year in rebates from the Fruit Growers’ Express (now an Armour line), and perhaps the amount was nearer $100,000.[289] The reduction of icing charges to favored shippers is, of course, only another way of paying rebates. Yet the car-lines contend that icing charges are compensation for a private service which is not part of the transportation service, and therefore outside the Interstate law. The Interstate Commerce Commission says: “It has been very customary in the past, and the practice still prevails in some quarters, to allow to particular shippers a reduction in these refrigerator charges. Testimony recently taken at Chicago shows that one large shipper of California to various eastern destinations was allowed concessions of this kind, which probably aggregated in a series of seven or eight years several hundred thousand dollars.”[290] The testimony of H. J. Streychmans before the Commission at Chicago, May 12, 1905, throws much light on the Armour Car business. Mr. Streychmans was for over 4 years, from April, 1900, to August 1904, in the employ of Armour & Company, and the Fruit Growers’ Express, one of their car-line systems. One of his duties was to check ice bills. He says the Armour Car-Lines generally pay $2 to $2.50 a ton for ice, except on the St. Paul and Northwestern and Erie. On the Northwestern the Armours paid $1 a ton for ice, and on the Erie $1.25 or $1.50. “These were the main lines. The Northwestern and St. Paul handled practically all the green fruit shipments, and the Erie used to get the shipments east.” The profits were “five or six hundred percent.” On the very long hauls the percentage was not so high. From Fresno, California, to Boston, for example, the cost of icing was about $38 and the Armour tariff charge for icing was $125, leaving a margin of $87 a car.