“A weak line is a line which is dependent largely upon through traffic and which has not much local business. These great shippers who control anywhere from ten to twenty-five cars a day will take all their business off this weak line and put it on the strongest line, which already has all it can do. “Then the weak line is in trouble, and it comes to these shippers and says: ‘Well, how can we get you back?’ The shippers say: ‘You can only get us back by giving us five or ten cents a hundred off from the tariff.’ The weak line invariably does it.” Then Mr. Depew gave an instance of “one of the great merchants of the West” who, on the organization of the Joint Traffic Association, said: “I never have paid within twenty-five cents a hundred of tariff rates, and I won’t do it now.” “His business,” continued Mr. Depew, “was on what we call one of the weak lines. He took it off that line and put it on one of the strongest lines. That left the weak line without any westbound business. “Then the weak line said: ‘We have got to have business.’ So we simply closed our eyes while the weak line gave a rate twenty-five cents a hundred less than the rest of us charged, and this firm advanced while the others were stationary or went out of business. This firm advanced by leaps and bounds to the front rank and toward the control of the business.” If all the roads in the field do not come into the pool there is every temptation for the outsider to cut rates. For example, in 1896 one of the trunk lines outside of the Joint Traffic Association was carrying grain from Chicago to the seaboard at 13 cents per hundred when the established tariff, which the Association was supposed to be maintaining, was 20 cents.[389]