Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 November 1889 — INTERSTATE COMMERCE. [ARTICLE]

INTERSTATE COMMERCE.

IMPORTANT DECISIONS RENDERED BY THE COMMISSION. • The Rule Regarding Shipments of Cattle In Car Lots—Throngh Rates and Mileage Regarding Shipments of Lumber from the South by Ball and Water. The inter-state commerce commission has rendered three important decisions. In the oase of Lenord and Chappell against the Chicago and Alton railroad the commission decides thwt carriers can rightfully substitute for the practice of charging carload rates on cattle, irrespective of weight, the rule that while a carlot is named a minimum weight for a carload is prescribed, and any excess over the minimum is to be charged for by the hundred pounds in proportion to the carlot rate. The complainants urged the commission to conform to the State laws and rulings of Kansas and Missouri State commissioners under which shippers of cattle to points within the State had the right to load cars without regard to weight at a stated price a car. The commission held, however, that State action could not De allowed to control in matters within the Federal jurisdiction, and that the grant to the Federal government of the power to regulate inter-State commerce is full and complete and can not be narrowed or encroached upon by State authority either directly or indirectly. In an opinion on the case of McMorran Harrington, grain dealers at Port Huron, Mich., against the Grand Trunk and the Chicago & Grand Trunk roads, Commissioner Schoonmaker says: “Though rates are not required to be made on a mileage basis, nor local rates to correspond with the divisions of a jotht through rate over the same line. Mileage is usually an element of importance, and due regard to distant proportions should be observed in connection with the other considerations that are material in fixing transportation charges.” The complaint tha tan 8-cent rate on grain from Port Huron to Buffalo was unreasonable as compared with a through rate of 15 cents a hundred pounds from Chicago to Buffalo was not sustained, but no good reason having!/ )e ®n shown for a higher rate on grain products that portion of the complaint is sustained and the products ordered to be carried at the sam3 rate as grain. Commissioner Morrison in deciding the case of Abbott against tha East Tennessee railroad, which is charged with illegal discrimination in lumber rates from Tennessee points to Boston, says: “Combined rail and water competition at a longer distance point does riot justify a greater charge for the shorter distance, while the shorter distance point is maintained by the carrier at points where tho competition is of greater force and mora controlling than at the longer distance point; such greater charge is not justified by the fact that local rates have been first paid on lumber to the longer distance points, nor by the fact that the freight is shipped in cars from the longer distance points which brought machinery to those points and for which profitable return loads were not always to be had, nor by a difference in the bulk and value of the lumber when the published rate sheets put the lumber in the same class and at the same rate. “While distance Is not always a controlling element in determining what is a reasonable rate there is ordinarily no better measure of railroad service in carryirg goods than the distance they are carried; and when the rate of freight charges over one line in sending freight carried from a neighboring territory to the same market is considerable greater than oyer other lines for distances as long or longer such greater rate is held to bo excessive and should be reduced.”