The whole history of the traffic associations shows that discriminations can be guarded against by pooling only to a very limited extent.[390] The legalization of pooling would enable railroads that wished to insist on the maintenance of rates to bring suit against roads disregarding the agreement. This would make it harder to get all the railroads into a pool, for part of the inducement is the impunity with which the agreement may be shuffled off, while on the other hand the degree of respect manifested by the railroads for the law does not justify much hope that it would be effective in holding them to any pooling contract if they thought they could make more by breaking it than by keeping it. The fact is that the railroads understand each other now about as well as if pooling were legalized. They constantly make rate agreements and have no hesitation in securing whatever degree of unity they desire with or without law. Pools at best do not apply to local traffic, but only to business between competing points, so that all discriminations in local traffic are left absolutely untouched. And as to competitive points, pooling is far less effective than consolidation, and consolidation has shown no tendency to do away with any more than one of the six classes of discrimination, while it emphasizes and extends the discriminations in favor of the great industrial interests whose ownership is interlocked with that of the big railroad systems, so that the advance of consolidation means the extension of the influence of the giant industrials in whose favor the most grievous discriminations are granted. Pooling and combination are good in many ways,[391] and ought to be legalized;[392] but they cannot be relied on to abolish discrimination,—they leave the worst forms untouched, intensify some of them, and diminish only one of the six classes of preference. Shippers have a strong prejudice against pooling, and the railroads do not care so much about it as they used to, for consolidation and mutual understanding have enabled them to accomplish in part the purposes they had in view in the traffic agreements of earlier years.[393] _Wrestling with the Long-Haul Abuse._