PUBLIC SERVICE COMPANIES that in a case like that under consideration it is difficult to afford the complainant ade quate relief. The defendant railway com pany owns most of the mines upon its system. It both mines the coal and trans ports it to market. It is a matter of entire indifference to it whether a profit accrues from the mining or from the transportation. It may so adjust its rates that the mining of its coal will be conducted at a loss, the profit being derived from the carriage, and in such event every coal operator upon its line paying those rates must do business at a loss. The only remedy available in such case to the independent operator is to secure to him a reasonable rate." It cannot be insisted upon too strongly that the paramount duty of the common carrier is to the public. It must do nothing inconsistent with that obligation. To carry its own goods at lower rates than it carries those of the shipping public will enable it to market those goods at lower prices than other shippers can make. And this, it is submitted, is in substance discrimination, or at all events has all the effects of dis crimination. Moreover, to a certain extent these evils are practically unavoidable from the nature of the case wherever a common carrier is also a dealer in the commodities it carries.1 VIII A recent instance of the inherent dangers in the situation where a public service is combined with a private business is seen in the invention of a kind of railway, known to-day as the "industrial railway." This is a short line of railway owned by an indus trial corporation or by the owners of some business enterprise which connects the factory or plant with the main line of some railway. It may be several miles in length or it may amount to no more than a short spur track, but it is organized as an 1 Compare Coxe Bros. & Co. v. Lehigh Valley Ry. 4 I.C. C.Pep. 535.
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independent railway corporation, so that it may enter into nominal through-rate agree ments: and posing as the originating carrier, it demands and receives a considerable pro rata of the through rate. It has been shown again and again that this arrange ment in reality gives a rebate to the con cern which uses this scheme, and that its competitors cannot do business against it in many cases. But without thorough-going law this great abuse cannot be met. The Interstate Commerce Commission will go no further than to forbid this practice if the industrial railway is not a common carrier. Thus in Central Yellow Pine Asso ciation v. Illinois Central Railway (10 Int. Com. Rep. 545) it said: "The logging roads or 'tap lines,' to the owners of which the Mobile and Ohio road makes allowances out of the published rate from the mills to desti nations, do not appear to be common car riers, or carriers for the public, subject to the provisions of the act to regulate com merce, but the private property of the mill owners used for hauling logs to their mills. Those allowances are therefore unlawful." But in an opinion, Re Divisions of Joint Rates, 10 Int. Com. Rep. 385, in discussing a short line of railway operated in connec tion with a harvester plant, but handling other freight at the same time, it said: "The mere fact that the road is to-day entirely owned by the largest individual shipper over it, or that it was originally organized and built for the purpose of doing the work of that shipper, is not, in our opinion, con trolling against the legality of the trans action before us." After all there seems to be the same com mercial wrong in the second case as in the first. Indeed, if there is a competitor upon the industrial railway in the second case, the people who are carrying on both their private business and the industrial railway will get not only a rebate upon their own shipments but they will get a rebate upon all their competitors' shipments as well. Therefore it is now recognized that it is not
