The Interstate Commission held that the regulations of the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe, reserving to themselves the right of routing, were unlawful under the discrimination clauses, but the court did not decide this point. (I. C. C. Rep. 1904, p. 78.) Mr. Ferguson says the private car-lines “sell the tonnage to the highest bidding connecting line. It is purely a matter of bargain and sale.”[242] Unfair distribution of cars is an easy means of discrimination. Failure to furnish cars to complainant for shipments of grain, while supplying more than a fair proportion of cars to a competing shipper in the same town, is as effective as any rebate could be.[243] Railways have refused cars to persons desiring to ship railroad ties which the railways did not wish to have go out of their own field.[244] A Michigan railroad neglected to furnish the Richmond Elevator Company with cars in which to ship the hay the company had contracted to deliver, although the railroad was all the while supplying other shippers with cars for hay and straw, etc.[245] The Pennsylvania Railroad has been recently sued by independent coal companies along its line for $2,000,000 damages for refusal to furnish cars in fair proportion. It is charged that the mines in which the railroad company is interested have had all the cars they needed, while the independents have not received cars enough to fill their orders; in consequence of which great loss has been inflicted upon them and their business diverted to the railway mines. The B. & O. was also sued for refusing to furnish cars to the Glade Coal Company, while supplying cars to competing mines.[246] In the case of the West Virginia Northern Railroad[247] the Circuit Court issued a mandamus ordering the road to cease from discrimination against the Kingwood Coal Company in the supply of cars and to furnish said company with a specified percentage of cars. In affirming this decision the Circuit Court of Appeals said: