"The remarkable thing about the matter is that so many of these defendants should make the same mistake--a mistake, too, that it was antecedently so improbable any of them would make. The Louisville and Nashville, the Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific, the Newport News and Mississippi Valley, and the Illinois Central companies are all found giving out the same erroneous information, and no one of them can tell how or why it happened to be done, much less how so many could contemporaneously, in dealing with the same subject, fall into so strange an error. It is to be noted, too, that it is not a subordinate agent or servant who makes the mistake in any instance, but it is the man at the head of the traffic department, and whose knowledge on the subject any inquirer would have a right to assume must be accurate. In no case is the error excused."[442] The cases in which Rice prosecuted the railroads before the Interstate Commerce Commission are among the most important that have been tried by the Commission. The charges made by Rice were conclusively proved, except as to some minor roads and circumstances. The Commission declared the rates that were charged him to be illegal and unjust, and a discrimination that must be stopped. It ordered the roads to discontinue using their power as common carriers to carry Rice's property into the possession of a rival. "The conclusion is irresistible that the rate sheets were not considerately made with a view to relative justice."[443] The facts of these discriminations--"unjust," "illegal," and "abhorrent"--are on the records as judicially and finally determined. But one of the combination said before the Pennsylvania Legislature, at Harrisburg, as reported in the Harrisburg _Patriot_, February 19, 1891: "I say to you all, in good faith, that since the passage of the Interstate Commerce law, and the introduction of that system, we have never taken a rebate. I mean we have taken no advantage over what any other shipper can get. I make the statement broadly, and I challenge the statement to the very utmost, and will pay the expenses of any litigation undertaken to try it."