The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-05-12
RAILROAD COMPETITION
MIR. BLANCHARD DISCUSSES A PHASE
OF THE TRAFFIC QUESTION,
Showing that Railway Competition Is
IL Different Thing from val
in Other Business.

To the Editor Of the indianapolis Journal:
When the term competition is applied
to purchasing and selling transportation as
it is to buying and vending goods, it is a
misnomer, because historically and in
stinctively the word conveys to most minds
thoughts Of bargaining and concession.
Buyers seek better terms than sellers first
ask by inviting price reductions, easier
terms of payment, ETC., and sellers whose
capital, manufacturing facilities, control of
specialties, rentals, ETC., differ. may, in
order to divert buyers from known and I'M
known rivals, sell at dissimilar prices
adapted to market conditions, the proper
tons of cash or notes offered in payment,
their experiences with buyers responsible
tiles and the profits upon the entire bills
sold.
All this is proper, but it would not be
proper for the same buyers or sellers to
barter and bargain in the same ways for
different railway rates, nor would it be
proper or legal for rival railways to con-
cede preferential rates, varied to accord
with each agents, of each merchants
credit, shipments, etc, or the capitaliza-
tons, dividends, distances or facilities of
his line.
Competing vendors in market places or on
wagons openly cry their own and decry
a rivals wares and misrepresent each
others goods and methods, but variable
rates, bills of lading and tickets, founded
on Misrepresentation and determinations,
must not be peddled publicly from railway
wagons or privately in railway offices.
Yachtsmen compete for prizes with
presumable honesty, but a crew may be
corrupted, a yacht purposely fouled or its
spars weakened, when it is not .'competi-
tion," because the contest may be decided
by fraud. The same principle holds true
in athletic games, horse races, prize fights,
etc. If the judges in competitive exhibitions
of machinery or art sell their awards, it is
not competition more than it would be
II the railway procured the derailment of
its rivals trains or misrepresented the
time and connections of it's own or other
routes. Prison laborers do not fairly COM
pete with honest toilers, nor would rail-
ways be justified, because of labor competi-
ton in reducing the compensations of their
enginemen to the wages paid convict engi-
neers.
If a yacht owner, trade or art exhibitor
or athlete violates the rules of his guild
in it's contests, he is debarred from further
competition and publicly denounced, but if
the fair rates and rules governing the far
more important public functions of trans
portation are violated by a railway which
aided to make them, that railway is given
which would dismiss their own members
for lesser infraCtions of their fair charges
and rules. This is not competition, but a
reward for lllegal determinations.
UNTRUE COMPETITION.
1t is not, therefore, true competition when
one or more railways unequally alter prop
er public rates or rules to which they have
previously assented, and which other and
more judiciously managed railways seek to
observe in furtherance of law and the pub
lie interest, as the great majority of rail-
ways sincerely desire and strive to do. Nor
is it true competition when strong and we'll
meaning carriers, which have lost their
business to lax rivals, take some legal
chances to regain and keep it, because if
they waited for the laws inefficient help in
such instances all their rival business
Again, if one railway company offers the
tariff rate, another reduces it unreasonable
and other carriers offer further rebate in
varying ways, it is clear that if the first
rate was reasonable the last one is unreal
sonably low, and that such devices, which
are not competition, involve loss to the first
shipper and the last carrier. Such. cOndi-
lions constitute preference, discrimination,
waste and bankruptcy, and mean that fair
rate standards should be restored.
Assume, again, one railway, sturdy for its
proper rates, pitted against another plant
with concessions from the same rates, and
two shippers of diverse business standards,
and that the yielding railway grants the
persuasive large shipper unknown rebates.
In such strife both railways may be ruined,
one because it loses it's business, the other
because il loses its profits, and the one
merchant is sure to be ruined; but the re-
ceiver of rebates will survive and will con-
troll his kind of business at the point where
the rebate is granted. This is not cOmpe-
tition within any honorable meaning. Nor
even if it be modern law, is it sound bust
ness sense or good public policy to say that
to rightfully and rightly place both of said
,a | Iva xS and both of said merchants on
equal and equitable conditions is a restraint
of trade?
he retires from such strife. Ii but one of
those two railways fail, it must continue in
business, and the thoughtless say it is then
best prepared TO take the largest traffic at
the lowest rates to which other carriers
must conform or lose their traffic, being
the only trade in which a bankrupt makes
values for solvent rivals, and the only bust
ness which it is popularity believed may be
increased upon insoiYent capital.
This is not true competition, and railway
reorganizations based on such false condi-
tions invite renewed failure, for they in
duce reprisals and the loss of the business
they thus divert from others.
RESULTS OF PREFERENCES.
Again, if all railways gave but one ship
per one cent per one hundred pounds adj
vantage. he would ultimately control the
cereal markets of the Nation. SO would he
if one railway at each large shipping point
granted him that preference while all other
railways thereat stood firm for right rates
and doing. The result, therefore, differs
only in degree, if the same advantage be
given by one or many railways to five ship
pers at the same or different points who
may then attack each other until the sur
vivors are fewer. This is not competition.
but assault and uncomfortable faVoritiSm.
The protection of right always requires the
restraint of wrong. Especially is this true
of transportation, wherein both protection
and restraint must come from railway CO.