and highways.  Some kind of quick transportation across country was, consequently, an indispensable condition of the national organization of American industry and commerce.  The railroad not only supplied this need, but coming as it did pretty much at the beginning of our industrial development, it largely modified and determined the character thereof.  By considerably increasing the area within which the products of any one locality could be profitably sold, it worked naturally in favor of the concentration of a few large factories in peculiarly favorable locations; and this natural process was accelerated by the policy which the larger companies adopted in the making of their rates.  The rapid growth of big producing establishments was forced, because of the rebates granted to them by the railroads.  Without such rebates the large manufacturing corporation controlled by a few individuals might still have come into existence; but these individuals would have been neither as powerful as they now are, nor as opulent, nor as much subject to suspicion.

It is peculiarly desirable to understand, consequently, just how these rebates came to be granted.  It was, apparently, contrary to the interest of the railroad companies to cut their rates for the benefit of any one class of customers; and it was, also, an illegal practice, which had to be carried on by secret and underhand methods.  Almost all the state laws under which corporations engaged in transportation had been organized, had defined railways, like highways, as public necessities.  Such corporations had usually been granted by the states the power to condemn land,—­and the delegation of such a power to a private company meant, of course, that it owed certain responsibilities to the public as a common carrier, among which the responsibility of not allowing special privileges to any one customer was manifestly to be included.  When the railroad managers have been asked why they cut their published rates and evaded the laws, they have always contended that they were forced to do so; and whatever may be thought of the plea, it cannot be lightly set aside.  As we have seen, the trunk lines leading from Chicago to the coast were the result of the consolidation of local roads.  After the consolidations had taken place, these companies began to compete fiercely for through freight, and the rebates were an incident in this competition.  The trunk lines in the early years of their existence were in the position of many other American business enterprises.  For the time being, they were more than competent to carry all the freight offered at competitive points.  Inasmuch as there was not enough to go around, they fought mercilessly for what business there was.  When a large individual shipper was prepared to guarantee them a certain amount of freight in return for special rates, they were obliged either to grant the rates or to lose the business.  Of course they submitted, and defended their submission as a measure of self-preservation.