Rice did not sleep under this new assault. He went to the Attorney-General of Ohio, and had those of the railroads which were Ohio corporations brought to judgment before the Supreme Court of Ohio, which revoked their action, and could, if it chose, have forfeited their charters. The Supreme Court found that these railroads had charged "discriminating rates," "strikingly excessive," which "tended to foster a monopoly," "actually excluded these competitors," "giving to the favored shippers absolute control."[404] Rice went to Cincinnati, to Louisville, to St. Louis, and Baltimore to see the officials of the railroads. He found that the roads to the South and West, which took his oil from the road which carried it out of Marietta, were willing to go back to the old rates if the connecting road would do so. But the general freight agent of that company would give him no satisfaction. He wrote, October 3d, to the president of the road over which he had done all his business for years. He got no answer. He wrote again October 11th, no answer; October 20th, no answer; November 14th, no answer. Rice had been paying this road nearly $10,000 a year for freight, sending all his oil over it. The road had used its rate-making power to hand over four-fifths of his business to another, but he has never been able to get so much as a formal acknowledgment of the receipt of his letters to the head of the road, asking that his petitions for restoration of his rights on the highway be considered. A part only of the letters and telegrams which he sent during these years--to get rates, to have his cars moved, to rectify unequal charges, to receive the same facilities and treatment others got--fill pages of close print in the Trust Report of the Congressional Committee of Manufactures of 1888. "Your time is a good deal occupied with correspondence, is it not?" "I should say so. If the rates had been more regular, I would not have had so much correspondence. It takes about all my time to look after rates."[405] Driven off his direct road to market, Rice set to hunting other ways. The Baltimore and Ohio, he found, was, though very roundabout, the only avenue left by which he could get his oils into Southern markets. He began to negotiate with it immediately, but it was not until several months later--the middle of November--that he succeeded in closing arrangements. To get to Chattanooga, Tennessee, over this route his oil had to travel 1186 miles as against 582 miles by the roads which had been closed to him, and yet the rate was lower over the more than double distance. Again, he could send a barrel of oil 1213 miles by the Baltimore and Ohio to Birmingham, Alabama, for $1.22, while the roads he had been using put his rate up to $2.26, although their line to Birmingham was only 685 miles.