Speaking of this experience Governor Larrabee of Iowa said in 1893: “Every year seemed to add to the grievances of the public. Success greatly emboldened the railway companies. Discriminations seemed to increase in number and gravity. At many points in the western part of the State freight rates to Chicago were from 50 to 75 percent higher than from points in Kansas and Nebraska. A car of wheat hauled only across the State paid twice as much freight as another hauled twice the distance from its point of origin to Chicago. Minnesota flour was hauled a distance of 300 miles for a less rate than Iowa flour was carried 100 miles. Certain merchants received from the railroad companies a discount of 50 percent on all their freights, and thus were enabled to undersell all their competitors. The rate on coal in carload lots from Cleveland, Lucas County, to Glenwood was $1.80 per ton, and from the same point to Council Bluffs only $1.25, although the latter was about thirty miles longer haul. Innumerable cases of this kind could be cited. There was not a town or interest in the State that did not feel the influence of these unjust practices.” _The Hepburn Investigation._ This most famous and enlightening investigation of the early period was that of the Hepburn Committee of New York in 1879. The committee found that many shippers were paying two or three times, and in some cases five times, the rates paid by their rivals. William H. Vanderbilt told the committee that, as a rule, all large shippers who asked for special rates got them. Among the men his road had helped to build up by special rates was A. T. Stewart, the great dry-goods merchant of New York. He had a rate of 13 cents from his factories over the New York Central to New York, while small concerns paid 20 to 40 cents for this same service. A big dealer in cotton cloth had a 20 cent rate, while others paid the regular 35 and 40 cent rate. Five grocery firms in Syracuse had a flat 9 cent rate instead of the published tariff of 37, 29, 25, and 18 cents, according to the class of goods. Four Rochester firms had a special rate of 13 cents against the regular tariff of 40, 30, 25, and 20 cents. Five firms at Binghamton and five at Elmira had rates from ⁵⁄₉ to ⅓ of the tariff. Three Utica dry-goods merchants had a rate of 9 cents and another had a rate of 10 cents, while the regular rates which the outside public paid were 33, 26, and 22 cents, according to class. Soap shipped by B. of New York to C. of Syracuse cost 12 cents freight per box if the freight was paid by the shipper in New York, but only 8 cents a box if the freight was paid by the consignee in Syracuse.