The officials in charge of the Traffic Departments of each company had to justify their retention in their positions by somehow getting more than their share of the business, and the temptations to offer whatever inducements were necessary to get that business amounted almost to compulsion. Without it, not the particular official only, but his company, would be extinguished. The situation was further aggravated by the fact that the goods that were to be carried were largely staples shipped in large quantities by individual shippers--millers, owners of packing houses, mining companies from the one end, and coal and oil companies from the other. One of these companies might be able to offer a railway more business in the course of a year than it could hope to get from all the small traders on its lines combined--enough to amount almost to affluence if it could be secured at the regularly authorised rates. The keenness of the competition to secure the patronage of these large shippers can be imagined; for it was, between the companies, a struggle for actual existence. All that the shipper had to do was to wait while the companies underbid each other, each in turn cutting off a slice from the margin of profit that would result from the carrying of the traffic until, not infrequently and in some notorious cases, not only was that margin entirely whittled away but the traffic was finally carried at a figure which meant a heavy loss to the carrier. The extent to which the Standard Oil Company has profited by this necessity on the part of the railways to get the business of a large shipping concern at almost any price, rather than allow its cars and motive power to remain idle, has been made sufficiently public.