Abuse of the “rebilling privilege” or the “expense bill system” is still in full bloom. Rebilling properly relates to the reshipment of goods received in unbroken carload lots, so as to make them complete a continuous trip at the through rate from the point of origin to final destination. But it appears from a case passed upon this year, 1905, by the Supreme Court of Mississippi, that merchants in Vicksburg receiving freight over the Vicksburg, Shreveport and Pacific Railroad are allowed to use their “expense bills,” showing the amount of freight received over that line, in a way that enables them to get reduced rates. Within 90 days of the date of any expense bill the holder can ship out over that road an equal quantity of freight not necessarily the same he had received, but anything he chooses. By this means the Vicksburg merchants can get grain by barge and ship it out at 3½ cents, while the merchants of Meridian have to pay 10 cents on similar shipments, and the low rate was not available either for merchants in Vicksburg who did not deal with the said specially favored associated line having the through rate.[206] In a still more recent investigation (July 1905) by the Interstate Commission at Louisville, Ky., it appears that on presentation of an expense bill for each car of grain from St. Louis at any time within the preceding 90 days, the Louisville dealer may ship an equal amount of grain on to Atlanta at a rate 3 cents per hundred below the tariff from Louisville to Atlanta. One day during the hearing 67 expense bills were presented in evidence, some of which had been altered and the rest duplicated and even triplicated with the result of giving the guilty shippers an unlawful advantage of 3 cents a hundred over their competitors selling grain in the southeastern territory. Many of these bills were admitted to be forgeries from beginning to end, while others were altered by erasing the original words and writing in others. For example, wheat was sent as bricks by erasing the word “bricks” on an incoming bill, writing in the word “wheat” and using the altered bill to forward a car of wheat at the expense bill discount. Every one of the bills in the bunch we are speaking of was in favor of a single Louisville firm which does an immense business in the Southeast. In other cases goods are not billed right. Dealers have been known to ship cutlery as iron bolts, and dynamite as dried apples. False billing as to weight is practised both in freight and express shipments. The carrier acts in collusion with the shipper in some cases while at other times the carrier is among the defrauded. Sometimes large amounts of freight are sent without being billed at all. “I know of a point,” said Mr. Davies of Chicago, representing 70 fruit associations of that city, “where 150 cases of strawberries were systematically loaded on a car upon which there was never any freight paid, and the rate was 21½ cents a crate.”