This is stronger than the impression I received, which was that discriminations did exist and it was not thought possible that they should cease to exist, so long as competition continues, but that there was an earnest purpose to eliminate them so far as possible. Notwithstanding the Colorado Case and others mentioned hereafter I still think that the present administration of the Santa Fe is on the whole relatively very honest and very admirable.[195] President Roosevelt was led to a similar conclusion by the frank and manly stand taken by Paul Morton in his testimony in the Dressed-meat Hearings, Jan. 7, 1902. In a letter to Mr. Morton, June 12, 1905, the President says: “At the time when you gave this testimony the Interstate Commerce Law in the matter of rebates was practically a dead letter. Every railroad man admitted privately that he paid no heed whatever to it, and the Interstate Commerce Commission had shown itself absolutely powerless to secure this heed. When I took up the matter and endeavored to enforce obedience to the law on the part of the railroads in the question of rebates, I encountered violent opposition from the great bulk of the railroad men and a refusal by all of those to whom I spoke to testify in public to the very state of affairs which they freely admitted to me in private. You alone stated that you would do all in your power to break up this system of giving rebates.” It was this, the President says, that led him to invite Mr. Morton to take a place in the Cabinet. The high character and ability of Mr. Morton and President Ripley and the fact that the Santa Fe management seems to represent high-water mark in railroad honesty, gives great importance to the Santa Fe cases, and the attitude of her leading officers towards the law, and the principle of impartial treatment of shippers. Paul Morton is reported to have said to a representative of the Chicago _Daily News_, December 31, 1904: “What Mr. Biddle did was exactly right, in my judgment, and if I had been in his place I should have done the same thing.” And President Ripley is stated to have said to a reporter for the _Inter-Ocean_, “It was not rebating. It was simply a figure agreed upon by private contract. Mr. Paul Morton was cognizant of it, and though his name may not be affixed to the order, he was the man from whom Mr. Biddle, the freight traffic manager, got authority to haul coal for the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company on the terms named.” “Did you also know of it, Mr. Ripley?” “Why, yes, as I know of all of our business. I consider it absolutely legitimate, and will do it again to-morrow if I like.”