PUBLIC SERVICE COMPANIES
297
petition; and that such storing of grain permitted to occupy a position where his was unlawful and injurious to the public. self-interest is at variance with his duty. All the informations prayed for the same In exercising the public employment for relief,— a perpetual injunction to restrain which he is licensed, he cannot be per defendants, as warehousemen, from storing mitted to use the advantage of his position grain in their own warehouses. to crush out competition and to combine The court granted the application. in establishing a monopoly, by which a Cartwright, the justice who wrote the opin great accumulation of grain is, in the hands ion, said in part: "The public warehouses of the warehousemen, liable to be suddenly established under the law are public agen thrown upon the market whenever they, cies, and the defendants, as licensees, pur as speculators, see profit in such course."1 sue a public employment. They are clothed with a duty towards the public XI The evidence shows that defendants, as This at least may be regarded as con public warehousemen storing grain in their ceded, that a public service company if own warehouses, are enabled to, and do, engaged in private business for itself depen overbid legitimate grain dealers, by exact dent upon the service it conducts ought not ing from them the established rate for store to prefer itself to its competitors in business age, while they give up a part of the storag- among the general public who have already charges when they buy or sell for them made application for service. But a posi selves. By this practice of buying and tion has already been taken far beyond this selling through their own elevators the proposition; it is now urged that those who position of equality between them and the are undertaking a public service ought not public whom they are bound to serve is de to be allowed to engage in private business stroyed, and by the advantage of their posi in competition with those whom they are tion they are enabled to crush out, and have professing to serve unless matters may be nearly crushed out, competition in the so arranged that the competition shall be largest grain market of the world. The upon equal terms. And it may very prob result is that the warehousemen own three ably prove necessary for the maintenance of fourths of all the grain stored in the public the highest type of public service to forbid warehouses of Chicago, and upon some of those who undertake such callings from the railroads the only buyers of grain are engaging at all in business of their own the warehousemen on that line. Where where their interests might come in con the warehouseman is a buyer, the manipu flict with the interests of those whom they lation of the grain may result in personal are serving. advantage to him. Not only is this so, The case bears some analogy to that of the but the warehouse proprietors often over trustee whose duty forbids him from entering, bid other dealers as much as a quarter of a for his own benefit, into transactions incon cent a bushel, and immediately resell the sistent with his duty to his cestui. Surely same to a private buyer at a quarter of a if the railroads should engage in manufactur cent less than they paid, exacting storage ing, in agriculture, in dealing in groceries, which more than balances their loss. In or in selling meats, there would be a great this way they use their business as ware housemen to drive out competition with •Accord, Hannah v. People 198 Ill. 77. — a more them as buyers. It would be idle to ex extreme case, holding an act passed to enable the pect a warehouseman to perform his duty warehousemen to do what was prohibited in this to the public as an impartial holder of the decision, unconstitutional because against the grain of the different proprietors, if he is clauses declaring warehouses public.
