Nobody regarded these secret rates as criminal or objectionable. But as time passed and these discriminations became more frequent and greater there arose a demand from the less favored portion of the shipping community for legislation forbidding the discrimination and providing for like opportunity for all. This was strenuously opposed by the favored shippers and by those railroad men who believed the railroad to be purely a private institution and not amenable to law as to its charges. It was common enough to hear it seriously argued that the larger shipper was entitled to the lower rate--this view was held by many shippers and, I believe, by most railroad managers. They argued that the business was like any other business--that each interest must look out for itself, and that competition between the roads would prevent rates from ever being too high. For myself I may say that I realized from an early period that discrimination as to rates was unjust and at no time objected to laws forbidding it. The interstate commerce law was passed in 1887. It was crude in its provisions and was the result of compromises between radicals and conservatives; it sought both to foster competition and to abolish it, and in that respect remains still contradictory and impossible. Upon the passage of the law, that which had been looked upon as perfectly proper and as the working of natural competitive forces became illegal and criminal. The railroads generally accepted the law and made an honest effort to observe it--the mercantile community did not--indeed, they openly defied it, soliciting rebates unblushingly and threatening with the loss of their tonnage those roads who would not succumb. The Interstate Commission, new to its duties, contented itself with comparatively unimportant decisions and practically did nothing to help those railroads who desired honestly to carry out the provisions of the law; and, as a result, within a year of the passage of the law it was quite generally disregarded. A few railroad men were fined, a few shippers convicted--and almost immediately pardoned--and the law fell into disrepute, a condition disgraceful alike to the government, the shippers and the railroads and especially distasteful to the latter, but exactly what was to be expected. The result was the passage of the so-called Elkins bill, and later the Hepburn bill, which, while amateurish and in many ways vicious, have effectually stopped the rebate system--a result for which we may all be thankful.