A pretext for the suppression of the barrel was easily found. It was a poor one, but poor pretexts are better than none. When the future "trustees" of the "light of the world" were doing a small fraction of the business, they got the contract of 1872 from the railroads to "overcome" all their competitors, on the pretext of "increasing the trade."[229] When by this contract and those that followed it they had secured nine-tenths of the trade, they got the railroads to say "no" to the remaining one-tenth, on the pretext that they could not ship as much.[230] When the Interstate Commerce law declared it to be a crime for railroads to forbid persons the road because they could not ship as much as others, the combination had the railroads shut out its rivals, on the pretext that they did not use tank-cars,[231] although tank-cars "are worse than powder." When regular tank-cars were offered by its competitors for shipment--as to the Pacific coast--the combination introduced an inferior tank-car, of which it claimed, without warrant, as the courts afterwards held, that it owned the patent, and so obtained the sole right of way across the continent, on the pretext that other shippers did not use this poor car.[232] The pretext now used against the refiners of Pennsylvania was the passing phrase, "He must pay freight on barrels," in a decision of the Interstate Commerce Commission concerning Southern traffic. This decision had no relevancy to the oil business of the North. Six months went by after it was given with no intimation from any one that it related in any way to the situation in Pennsylvania, and to be so applied it had to be turned inside out and upside down. In the Rice case the Commission had decided that freight rates must be reduced on barrel shipments. This was, in the sharp language of the decision, to put an end to "the most unjust and injurious discrimination against barrel shippers in favor of tank shippers," a discrimination which the Commission has elsewhere said "inured mostly to the benefit of one powerful combination." In ordering this reduction it said: "Even then the shipper in barrels is at some disadvantage, for he must pay freight on barrels as well as on oil." By "must pay" the Commission meant "was paying." It was, as it afterwards protested, "rather a statement of a prevailing practice than a ruling."[233] And the remark furthermore concerned the trade in the South and Southwest alone, where special circumstances existed not found at the North.