But this law, like our tariff laws, was
framed for the benefit chiefly of a combination of local and special
interests; and it served little to advance any genuine national interest
in relation to the railroads. To be sure it did forbid rebates, but the
machinery for enforcing the prohibition was inefficient, and during
another twenty years the prohibition remained substantially a dead
letter. The provisions of the law forbidding rebates were in truth
merely a bit of legal hypocrisy. Rebates could not be openly defended;
but the business of the country was honeycombed with them, and the
majority of the shippers in whose interest the law was passed did not
want the prohibition enforced. Their influence at Washington was
sufficiently powerful to prevent the adoption of any effective measures
for the abatement of the evil. The Federal Inter-state Commerce
Commission, unlike the local authorities, would have been fully
competent to abolish rebates; but the plain truth was that the effective
public opinion in the business world either supported the evil or
connived at it.
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