The Rock Island freight traffic manager also testified to the destruction of papers showing rebates or concessions. “COMMISSIONER CLEMENTS. Why are they destroyed? “MR. JOHNSON. Simply for the purpose of destroying any evidence there may be. “COMMISSIONER CLEMENTS. All the papers you know about or entries that you are familiar with are destroyed? “MR. JOHNSON. I understand they are all destroyed. “COMMISSIONER CLEMENTS. Have you any recent ones? “MR. JOHNSON. I do not think they are more than thirty days old. “COMMISSIONER CLEMENTS. You think that all up to within thirty days are destroyed? “MR. JOHNSON. That is the rule or custom.”[362] The shippers who receive rebates, etc., adopt similar measures to keep their modest affairs from the public. In April, 1904, the newspapers reported that the Interstate Commerce Commission was going to Boston to investigate rebates and private car-line abuses. The office force of the Armour office at Boston was immediately set to work packing into barrels all letters and records that might show a combination or understanding among the houses or with the railroads, or other inconvenient matters, and all these dangerous documents were incontinently fed to the furnaces. On the other hand, shippers who are not of the favored class are afraid to complain for fear of persecution by delay of freight, overcharges, prolonged litigation of every difference or dispute, and probable intensification in some form of the discrimination in favor of their competitors. The Oregon Commission says: “The shipper preferred to tamely submit to the injustice put upon him through discriminations against him or unreasonable and extortionate charges and exactions for transportation facilities, than to hazard the utter ruin of his business by provoking the animosities of managers if he carried his grievances into the courts in order to have his rights determined and enforced.... Besides, if the shipper went to court with his grievances he was confronted by powerful and wealthy corporations who contested, with the aid of the ablest counsel money could procure, every inch of the ground in the controversy, thus making each contest between the individual shipper and these corporations an unequal one in proportion to the ability of the shipper personally to press his case as compared with the financial ability of the corporations.”[363] In a large majority of cases the loss sustained by the individual through favoritism or extortion is less than the probable injury resulting from litigation with powerful corporations employing the ablest counsel, contesting every inch of ground, defeating or delaying redress by every possible means, and squeezing the plaintiff meanwhile perhaps with a grip upon his business that means death to his prosperity, so that the shipper thinks it better to bear the ills he has than fly to others to which he has not been introduced.