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RATE-MAKING AND THE GOVERNMENT

not help this difficulty but would increase it.

5. Complaints that the rates charged by the railroads are in themselves too high. This complaint is not very common, because as a whole rates are very low, and in most cases the man who pays the freight is satisfied with the rate in itself, provided he feels sure that no one else is doing better than he is.

There are, and always will be, abuses in the conduct of railroad business as in the conduct of other business. That the abuses of which there is now complaint will be corrected by taking a given number of American citizens and making them officers of the Government, and charging them with some of the same duties that are now performed by the same class of people as private citizens, is very doubtful.

The rebate is one abuse, but that is practically gone as to the freight business. There remains personal discrimination in the passenger business by means of the pass or free ticket.

Discriminations between localities exist and must always exist in a country as large as the United States, and with as many vary-

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