A letter has found the light which was sent by the Louisville man who was so "fortunate in competing," immediately after he heard that one of "his" Nashville customers had received a shipment from the Marietta independent. It was addressed to the general freight agent of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. It complained that this shipment, of which the writer knew the exact date, quantity, destination, and charges, "slipped through on the usual fifth-class rate." "Please turn another screw," the model merchant concluded. What it meant "to turn another screw" became quickly manifest. Not daring to give the true explanation, none of the people implicated have ever been able to make a plausible explanation of the meaning of this letter. The railroad man to whom it was sent interpreted it when examined by Congress as meaning that he should equalize rates. But Congress asked him: "Is the commercial phrase for equalizing rates among railroad people 'turn another screw'?" He had to reply, helplessly, "I do not think it is." The sender before the same committee interpreted it as a request "to tighten up the machinery of their loose office."[386] Rice found out what the letter meant. "My rates were raised on that road over 50 per cent. in five days." "Was it necessary to turn on more than one screw in that direction to put a stop to your business?" "One was sufficient."[387] The rates to the combination remained unchanged. For five years--to 1886--they did not vary a mill. After the screw had been turned on, he who suggested it wrote to the offending merchants at Nashville, that if they persisted in bringing in this outside oil he would not only cut down the price of oil, but would enter into competition on all other articles sold in their grocery. He italicized this sentence: "_And certainly this competition will not be limited to coal-oil or any one article, and will not be limited to any one year._"[388] "Your co-operation or your life," says he. "Have you not frequently, as a shipper of oil, taken part in the competition with grocers and others in other business than oil, in order to force them to buy oil?" "Almost invariably I did that always."[389] "The expense and influence necessary for sustaining the market in this manner are altogether expended by us, and not by the representatives of outside oil," he further wrote. "Influence," as a fact of supply and demand, an element of price-making, is not mentioned in any political economy. And yet the "influence" by which certain men have got the highways shut to other shippers has made a mark as plain as the mountains of the moon on our civilization. "If we allow any one to operate in this manner," he continued, "in any one of our localities, it simply starts off others. And whatever trouble or expense it has given us in the past to prevent it we have found it to be, and still believe it to be, the only policy to pursue."[390]