A report of the Erie Railroad showed 34 cases of special cut rates, and a New York Central report showed 33 examples. The books of the Central showed 6000 special rates granted during the first 6 months of 1880. About 90 percent of the Syracuse business and 50 percent of the entire business of the road was done on special rates.[21] It had given special rates to individuals and firms at 22 points on its line between Albany and Buffalo. The specials generally went down to about ⅓ of the scheduled rates to the same place, but in Syracuse a special agreement was unearthed in which the rate was so emaciated as to be only ⅕ of the size of the regular rate on first-class goods to which it applied. The committee also found the long-haul discrimination in full bloom. Flour went from Milwaukee to New York for 20 cents, while the charge from Rochester to New York was 30 cents. On some goods the rate from New York to Syracuse, 291 miles, was 10 cents; New York to Little Falls, 217 miles, 20 cents; New York to Black Rock, 445 miles, 20 cents also. Syracuse must have had a strange fascination for the railroad men, to keep them from making a lower rate from the point 400 miles away than from the point 200 miles away, for they love long hauls. Goods were shipped from Rochester to New York and then from New York back over the same road through Rochester to Cincinnati more cheaply than they could be sent direct from Rochester to Cincinnati. W. W. Mack, a Rochester manufacturer, testified that he saved 14 cents a hundred in this way, and that he saved 18 cents a hundred in his St. Louis business in the same way. In both these cases the railroad company carried the goods 700 miles farther than the direct course for a charge considerably less than for the direct haul. Butter was carried from St. Lawrence Co., N. Y., to Boston for 60 cents a hundred, while the rate from nearer stations was 70 cents, 80 cents, and even 90 cents at St. Albans, Vt., increasing as the distance decreased. The railroads appear to recognize the fact that happiness consists in the exercise of the faculties, and they wish to exercise their faculties to the utmost by securing long hauls even though the long rate may not leave nearly so much profit as the rate for the short haul.