In a recent St. Louis case it appears that the railroads were paying 5 cents a hundred to transfer companies for carting goods across the river from East St. Louis to the depots in St. Louis. They paid the same amount to the Grant Chemical Company for hauling their own goods across the river and also to the make-believe transfer company of the Simmons Hardware Company, the traffic manager of which organized the company’s own teams into a little transfer company on purpose to get 5 cents per hundred from the railroads. Other shippers were refused the 5 cent teaming allowance. The Interstate Commission held that the payments to the Chemical Company and the burlesque Simmons transfer company were unlawful rebates.[201] Traffic within a State not subject to the Interstate Commerce Act is carried at low rates for favored shippers. Sometimes the shipper pays the full interstate rates in consideration of receiving preferences on shipments within the State to which the Interstate Act does not apply. Allowances and advantages are accorded in handling and storing. Commissions are paid, and goods are billed at less than actual weight. And goods are shipped under false classification or to a false name under the “straw man” system. This system is thus described by Mr. Gallagher, representative of the Merchants’ Exchange of St. Louis: “Instead of billing that stuff to the man I have sold it to I bill it to a fictitious man, or straw man. On the bills he is the actual shipper. I do not see him at all, don’t know anything about him, but he bills the stuff to the man that I want it to go to, my customer, and it will go through all right, and by and by the straw man sends me a check for a rebate. You cannot find him; at least, I have not been able to do it. That was also described to me by a man who practices it.”[202] Some shippers are allowed to let carloads lie 15 days without demurrage, while others have to pay for the car service they get.[203] In the West I found many instances of this. In Butte, for example, one mining company does not have to pay any demurrage, while other companies are charged with demurrage. Railway purchasing agents are instructed to buy supplies from parties who are large shippers, and these agents buy at prices which afford such shippers all the benefits they would get from a rebate on the freight rates.[204] This is, in fact, only another way of paying rebates. The allowance of fictitious claims is still in vogue.[205]