Tariff made by roads between Boston and Ogdensburgh:

For six classes of freight from Boston to Ogdensburgh,

1 2 3 4 5 6 classes,

60 50 45 30 25 17 cents per 100 pounds. Tariff made by Central Vermont line of steamers, via Ogdensburgh:

From Boston to Cleveland, Ohio, Detroit, Mich. and Port Huron, for the six classes of freight aforesaid, 41, 36, 29, 20, 17, 14 cents per 100 pounds.

Tariff made by Central Vermont line of steamers, via Ogdensburgh:

From Boston to Milwaukee and Chicago for the six classes of freight aforesaid, 44, 39, 31, 23, 19, 16 cents per 100 pounds.

Tariff made by roads between Boston and St. Albans:

For six classes of freight from Boston to St. Albans:

1 2 3 4 5 6 classes,

55 48 38 27 24 17 cents per 100 pounds. Tariff made by the National Despatch Line for points west of St. Albans:

From Boston to Montreal for the six classes of freight aforesaid, 45, 40, 30, 23, 20, 18 cents per 100 pounds.

From Boston to Detroit for the six classes of freight aforesaid, 51, 45, 35, 24, 20, 18 cents per 100 pounds.

Interrogatories and answers in regard to the freight and passenger business of the Central Vermont Railroad Company from Rouse's Point and Province Line to White River Junction and Windsor, and also from Essex Junction to Burlington, covering the fiscal year ending June 30, 1886.

1. What was the tonnage of through business East and West?

A. East bound, 882,259 tons. West bound 213,717 tons. Total, 1,095,976 tons.

2. What was the tonnage of joint freight East and West?

A. East bound, 161,934 tons. West bound, 54,219 tons. Total, 216,153 tons.

3. What was the tonnage of strictly local freight?

A. 71,325 tons.

4. What was the percentage of the through to the total?

A. 79 per cent.

5. What were the gross earnings of through freight?

A. $652,647.33, or 64 per cent of total freight earnings.

6. What were the gross earnings of local and joint freight?

A. $370,636.54, or 36 per cent of total freight earnings.

7. What were the net earnings of through freight?

A. $172,344.62.

8. What were the net earnings of local and joint freight?

A. $100,466.27.

9. What was the number of through passengers?

A. 87,206.

10. What was the number of joint passen.

A. 115,814.

11. What was the number of local passengers?

A. 230,401.

12. What were the gross earnings from through passengers?

c. The Vermont Central and Vermont and Canada Roads, now the Central Vermont Road, were constructed about 1849, and are wholly within the State of Vermont. They depended upon local tariff until 1856, when they went into the hands of a receiver and continued so for a good many years. They were reorganized in 1883. The original capital was lost. They run through a sparsley set-gers? tled country. If they depend upon local traffic, they cannot pay expenses and interest on their bonded debt as now reorganized, to say nothing of their stocks. As reorganized it is not a powerful and rich corporation, eager to swallow its competitors. It has not paid dividends on its stocks since its reorganization. On the other hand, the road has been brought up to a high state of efficiency with a view to doing a through business. Its track is steel railed and its equipment ten times greater than is necessary for local business. If restricted to a local business two results would follow the sale of their equipment, and the raising of local rates in order to pay operating expenses. Proper remuneration for the capital invested is a legitimate subject for consideration in determining reasonable rates, as well as extraordinary cost of service over roads like the Central Vermont and Og densburgh.

Harper's Interstate Law, 39.

d. But with through business the road manages to live and pay its expenses and interest upon its bonded debt of $7,000,000. It also relieves the local traffic from an increase of charges, and keeps them down to where they now are. The profit on the through business is small in degree, but is great in its results by reason of the magnitude of the business.

Auditor Lucas statement in respect to earn ings from through and local business is as fol

lows:

A. $153,945.51, or 38 per cent of total passenger earnings.

13. What were the gross earnings from local and joint passengers?

A. $250,149.10, or 62 per cent of total passenger earnings.

14. What were the net earnings from through passengers?

A. $50,628.71.

15. What were the net earnings from local and joint passengers?

A. $81,579.58.

The mortgage on the road is $7,000,000 at 5 per cent interest. It also has common and preferred stocks.

That a profit is made on the through business is not open to doubt. In the year the board of directors tested the question by cutting off the through business. The road scarcely earned its expenses. (See Gov. Smith's testimony.)

The trunk lines fix the rates to competing points; that is to say, the Boston and Albany, the New York Central Line, the Baltimore and Ohio, the New York and Erie and Pennsylva nia lines on the left, and the Grand Trunk and Canada Pacific on the right, all powerful lines,

which, it is to be presumed, are not unwilling | ville & Nashville Case covers every point. But to see the "survival of the fittest." Weak since the announcement of that decision, Judge lines are to be swallowed up, competition de- Deady has gone a step further, and held that stroyed, and the very purpose of the Interstate competition in all cases, whether by foreign or Commerce Law defeated. The rates thus fixed domestic corporations, or by water lines, conby the trunk lines must be met, or the Cen- stitutes a dissimilar circumstance. tral Vermont must go out of the business; and Ex parte Koehler, 1 Interstate Com. Rep. in meeting them another obstacle is in the way. 317. The Boston and Albany Line is about 140 miles shorter to Chicago than the Central Vermont Line. (See Porteous' Milage Computation.)

At the same rates from Boston to competing points in the West, traffic would naturally go by the shorter and quicker line. To meet the difficulty and overcome the inequality thus existing between the lines, it was, as early as 1865, conceded by the trunk lines that this line might charge less than the trunk lines to competing points in the West. This line was obliged to do this in order to secure business, and it was conceded by the trunk lines as a matter of justice. On the other hand, while this line was the longest and slowest, it could, nevertheless, make the lower rate because its line reached the great Lakes at Ogdensburgh by a shorter rail line (118 miles) than the Boston & Albany reached the great Lakes at Buffalo, and also because defendant's cars go West empty, unless they take freight at such rates as they can get. They maintain rates for east bound freight. (See maps and Porteous' Milage Computation.)

All the foregoing applies to the Ogdensburgh & Lake Champlain Road as well as the Central Vermont. See auditor's statement as to earn ings from through and local business.

The lines out of Boston that compete for west bound traffic to points in the West are very numerous, and are enumerated in the answers and shown on the maps.

Montreal is a competing point. The Grand Trunk, via Portland, is one line competing there; the water line, via New York and Lake Champlain, is another; the Delaware & HudsonCanal Company is another; the Canadian Pacific is another.

A vast amount of traffic that, before the passage of the Interstate Commerce Law, used to come over the Grand Trunk and Central Vermont, and was exported at Boston, now stops at Montreal, and is exported that way.

IV. a. It is true that the Boston & Albany Company, and everybody else, has a standing before this Commission to complain. But it is observable that this complaint does not come from a shipper who complains of the rates at Ogdensburgh and St. Albans respectively. It comes from a competitor at points on the great Lakes, and that is the real grievance. The Boston & Albany care nothing about the rates at Ogdensburgh and St. Albans. Theirs is not a missionary duty. But the trouble is, they want to get rid of their principal competitor for west bound traffic to competing points in the West.

But it has been generally supposed that the object of the Interstate Commerce Law was to encourage competition and to break down mo nopolies instead of creating them; and so the Commission announced in the Louisville & Nashville Case,

e. The decision in the Louisville & Nashville Case (1 Interstate Com. Rep. 278), completely covers this case. That case announces the rule that when the competition is by foreign railroads or lines, competition is of itself a dissimilar circumstance. Also water lines. The principal competitorsfor Boston west bound traffic are the Grand Trunk, via Port-equity must come into court with clean hands. land, and the Canadian Pacific, via the Southeastern, also a Canadian corporation, and a water line by ocean carriage from Boston to Halifax, and thence by the Inter-Colonial to Montreal, and by the other water lines referred to in the maps, answers and testimony.

Especially is this true by the all water line, via New York City, the Hudson River, the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes to Cleveland, Port Huron, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Chicago. New England agents sell their goods delivered in New York, at New England prices. The carriage by water from Boston to New York is trifling. The rates from New York to

Cleveland and Detroit are

35 30 25 18 17 15. And Milwaukee and Chicago,

35 30 25 20 18 16. The rates of insurance are much less by this line than by the Central Vermont Line of Steamers, via Ogdensburgh; so that in the ag gregate the rate is 8 to 10 cents per hundred pounds less than on any other line. A vast amount of New England business that used to go via Ogdensburgh now goes by this route, since the passage of the Interstate Commerce Law.

How often has it been held that he who seeks Motives are material. Thus when a stockholder of a private corporation buys the stock of a rival corporation for the purpose of bring. ing a suit to destroy the rivalry, he will not be heard in a court of equity, when the question

is one of discretion.

1 Redfield on Railways, 76.
The author says:

"But when the fact is established that under pretense of serving the interests of one company, the shareholders of a rival company, by purchasing shares for the purpose of liti gation, can make this court the instrument for defeating or injuring the company into which they so intrude themselves, in order to raise questions and disputes on matters as to which all the other members of the company may be agreed, I cannot consider that in such a case it is the province of the court ordinarily to interfere. In questions of the law of contracts, when there is a discretionary jurisdiction in this court, circumstances affecting the condition of the contracting parties and the origin of their rights in relation to the subject matter of the contract deserve great consideration."

b. The second, third, and fourth sections of the Interstate Commerce Law are merely deIt is unnecessary to go further. The Louis-claratory of the common law. Unjust dis

crimination was illegal at common law. So was undue preference; and to charge more for a shorter than a longer distance, for the same amount and class of freight, under the same circumstances, was also illegal.

Atchison, etc. R. R. Co. v. Denver, etc. R. R. Co. 110 U. S. 683 (Bk. 28, L. ed. 297).

The guiding rule at common law was, What is reasonable? And that is the rule, and the only guiding rule, under this statute, where every case involves a question of law and fact, and where every case depends on its own merits.

of course, of no consequence. A few illustra tions will be given for argument:

a. Let us take a few of the rates between Ogdensburgh and Vermont points to Boston (which are the ones complained of).

CENTRAL VERMONT RAILROAD.

Points.
Ogdensburgh

St. Albans, Burlington, The petitioners never have been able to Waterbury, break down the defendant's line as a competitor Montpelier, for through business. Is it reasonable that the Rutland, instrumentality of the Interstate Commerce Ludlow, Law should be used to accomplish that purpose, when the object of the Law was to promote competition?

c. The petition is based on the fourth section. No questions arise under any other section. Petitions must notify parties of what they have got to meet, otherwise interminable confusion arises on trial.

White River Junction, 144

Points.

Newport,
Barton,

As to the Petition of the Vermont State Grange. Lyndonville,

A.

The Rates to Boston, etc.

V. The rates between Boston and Ogdensburgh and St. Albans, respectively, and other Vermont points are reasonable, and for a great variety of reasons besides those enumerated above. The rates charged compare most favorably with those of other north and south lines. The character of the country through which these roads run, the cost of construction, the cost of operation and the amount of local support will, of course, be remembered. No proper comparison can be made between Vermont Roads and roads running through Massachusetts, between Boston and New York, where there are numerous rival roads and where the roads pass through large manufacturing districts, and are operated at a comparatively small expense. The only fair test is to take other roads, situated like the Central Vermont and Ogdensburgh Roads, and compare their interstate rates. The Passumpsic Road is of this character. The St. Johnsbury & Lake Champlain Road is another.

The rates made by the Central Vermont Road to Boston are less than the rates of either of these roads for the same distances. The rates made by the Central Vermont Road to Providence, Rhode Island, are also less than those of other Vermont lines. The rates made by the Connecticut River Railroad and the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad for Vermont business are higher, distances considered, than the rates made by the Central Vermont Road from St. Albans and other Vermont points to Boston, which latter are the subject of complaint. The tables submitted by Mr. Chittenden will show this. The local rates that begin and end in Vermont are,

Ryegate,
Bradford,
Norwich,

Points.
Swanton,

36

Rates per

Miles to

100 lbs.

PASSUMPSIC ROAD.

Q. You do not haul any more, in proportion, than your competitors, do you?

A. It hinges upon the traffic; Mr. Fink said to me the other day that the Pennsylvania Company hauled West as many as four cars to what they hauled East.

Q. From Boston?

A. No sir; on their system.

Q. They carry a good deal of coal, etc?
A. Yes.

Q. I am talking about the Boston system; doyou know whether or not your road carries any more than its proportion, as compared with the other roads, of empty cars back to the West?

A. I should think not.

Q. Are not the circumstances of competition between the western markets and the sea board substantially the same as from the sea board to the West?

A. There is much of a muchness about that; of course the haulage would be about the same; I don't know that there is any great difference. Q. You do not know that there is any dif ference in the service rendered between the east and west bound haul?

A. Yes; the same competitors of course.
By the Chairman:

Q. State what proportion you are now getting of the Boston business from Chicago, east bound.

A. I know nothing about the line south of St. Johns; there is one thing of a physical character affecting the question: there are a good many empty cars go West, and few going East; that would alter the haulage and cause the charges to vary.

Q. I suppose the hauling of empty cars is a thing common to all railroads?