Bisbee daily review., 1906-09-08
. . . C . . < . . . . . < . . . For Delegate to Congress . ' MARCUS A. SMITH. .
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THE TRUSTS AND REBATES.

Few people have ever given the question of railroad relating as it affects our every day expenses more than passing thought. In fact. many people have thought that it had no interest for the people generally and was nothing more than matter of arrangement between railroads and shippers.
 Those who have studied the matter and those who read the subjoined ar ticle upon the rebates secured by the Standard Oil will very quickly ap prec;ate the direct bearing which re batting has upon our individual house hold expenses, for in the end the people pay the freight, and while the Standard Oil secures immense concS sions in rebates they did not lower the price to the consumer, but used the vast amounts thus saved to swell their dividends.
 !, We must also bear in mind the further fact that similar rebates were secured by the beef trust and all the other trusts and the railroads thus held up by the trusts raised rates on other lines to meet the deficiency. letting the burden finally fall upn the people,
 The following from the Buffalo Times is, as we have remarked, aH exposition of the operation of only one of the trusts in the matter of re bates. There are others. The Times says:
 The tremendousness of the rebate privileges revealed in by corporate power are well illustrated by the fact that the Burlington and Alton rail roads charged a lawful rate of IS cents per 100 pounds on freight shipped from Whiting, Ind, to East St. Louis and 19 1-2 cents to St. Louis, but carried oil for the Standard Oil company to the same points at res pective rates of six and seven and a half cents. That is, in one case the Standard got discount of 66 2-3 per cent and in the other a discount of something like 50 per cent from the rates allowed the ordinary shipper
 On shipments to points in the south the Standard received concessions which averaged about 27 1-2 per cent 1 of the published rates.
 This persistent coddling of the Standard Oil monopoly and bludgeon- ing of the general shipper has resulted in practical protest by federal grand juries at Chicago. These bodies have returned against the Standard Oil company ten indictments containing total of GAPS counts.
 If the Oil trust is muicted the way | it ought to be, it stands in to pay fines of more than s12S,000,000, a sum worthy of consideration even in draw. l ing a Standard Oil check, and the payment of which would have an ap- preciable dampening effect on the regular dividend jubilees of that cor poration.
 The difficulty of getting at the facts of such transactions as those on which the Standard Oil indictments are based, is we'll known to lawyers, such deals are carried on behind closed doors, the silence which environs them is like that of the grave, and 1t is very hard to get proof which will stand the test of the rules of evi- dence.
 Yet the conditions accompanying the action of the Chicago grand juries afford some grounds for encourage, ment Every one of the thousands of counts in the indictments is founded on a single and we'll defined rebate transaction, each consisting of tank car shipment of petroleum products This precision in the work of the district attorneys office and the grand jury room is gratifying. It is evident that enough proof was offered to thf grand juries to enaDle them to tread upon firm ground in the finding ol indictments; an. what is enough evi
 dence of guilt for grand jury is. 1T , the absence of explanation or rsbut
 tai, sufficient to permit a trial jury t
 bring in a verdict of guilty. I In the present case there can b neither explanation nor rebuttal. Tn
 rebate plumber of the Standard Oi
 and other corporations is notorious
 and the fact of its existence, neve
 doubted at all from the viewpoint c ordinary judgment, is now supporte i by legal proof.
 2 The danger to the peoples caus
 lies, not in trial on the merits, but
 the technical resources of the Stan'
 ards lawyers. There the real issu
 Twill be joined and the fight will be f fierce one.