"We were threatened a great many times," the representative of the steamboat company told Congress.[412] The steamboat men were put to great expense and without proper cause. When the cases came to trial they were completely cleared in every instance. But the prosecution had done its work of harassing competition. The success of the campaign of 1879 in Ohio was now repeated over a wider field. The attack of 1886, "in a period of five months," Rice said before Congress, "shut up fourteen of my agencies out of twenty-four, and reduced the towns we had been selling in from seventy-three to thirty-four."[413] This was a loss in one year of 79 per cent., or about four-fifths of his business. CHAPTER XVII IN THE INTEREST OF ALL The difference in freights against Rice was so great, as the Interstate Commerce Commission found, after taking hundreds of pages of testimony, that he had to pay $600 to $1200, "or more," on the same quantity his opponent got through for $500. These discriminations were made, as the commissioners say, "on no principle.... Neither greater risks, greater expense, competition by water transportation, nor any other fact or circumstance brought forward in defence, nor all combined, can account for these differences."[414] The railroads had, of course, to give some reason, and they put forward the plea that it was much more expensive and dangerous to carry Rice's shipments, which were in barrels, than those of the combination, which were in tank-cars.[415] This excuse for charging him rates at which he could not ship at all did not stand examination by the Interstate Commerce Commission. But he did not wait for that. When he found the railroads were so fond of tank-cars, he set about getting them. He wrote the general freight agent and the president of the road that he would build tank-cars, and asked what his rate would be then; but he got no answer. He wrote other roads, but got no answer. He asked the general manager of the Queen City and Crescent Route the same question. After a correspondence of five months with him and other officials, in which he was shuttlecocked from one to another and back again, he had not only not succeeded in getting any tank-car rates, but at the end of that protracted exchange of letters the general manager wrote: "I was not aware that you had asked for rates on oil in tank-cars."[416] Rice wrote the Louisville and Nashville: "I will build immediately twenty tank-cars if you will guarantee me ... as low a net rate as accorded any other shipper." Commenting on his failure to get answers, the commissioners say: "Complainant did not succeed in obtaining rates. The denial of his right was plain, and stands unexcused.... What reason there may have been for it"--the refusal of rates--"we do not know, but find that they were not just or legal reasons."[417]