Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 3.djvu/786

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

OOB V. L. & H. B. 00.. 779 �partîeular case. Under it articles susceptible of easy trans- fer may be delivered at a general delivery depôt provided for the purpose. But live stock, coal, ore, grain in bulk, marble, etc., do not belong to this class. For these some other and more appropriate mode of delivery must be provided. Hence it is that persons engaged in receiving and forwarding live stock, manufacturers consuming large quantities of heavy material, dealers in coal, and grain merchants, receiving, storing, and forwarding grain in bulk, who are dependent on railroad transportation, usually select locations for the prose- cution of their business contiguous to railroads, where they can have the benefit of side connections over which their freight can be delivered in bulk at their private depôts ; and may a railroad company, after encouraging investments in mills, fumaces, and other productive manufacturing enter- prises on its Une of road, refuse to make personal delivery of the material necessary to their business, at their depôts, erected for the purpose, and require them to aocept delivery a mile distant, at the depôt of and through a rival and com- peting establishment ? Or may such railroad company estab- lish a "Union Coal Tard" in this city, and constitnte it its depôt for the delivery of coal, and thus impose on ail the coal dealers in the city, -with whom it bas side connections, the labor, expense, and delay of carting their coal supplies from such general delivery to their respective yards ? Or may such railroad company, in like manner, discriminate between grain elevators in the same place,— constitute one elevator its depôt for the delivery of grain, and force competing interests to receive from and transfer the grain consigned to them through such selected and f avored channel ? �If railroad corporations possess such right, they can de- stroy a refraetory manufacturer, exterminate or very mate- rially cripple competition, and in large measure monopolize and control these several branches of useful commerce, and dictate such terms as avarice may suggest. We think they possess no such power to kill and make alive. Impartiality in serving their patrons is an imperative obligation of ail railroad companies; equality of accommodations in the use ����