Q. Mr. Flagler, what is your rate of freight from the seaboard, or to the seaboard from Cleveland?
A. At the present time?
Q. Yes, sir, at the present time.
A. Do you mean per carload or by the barrel?
Q. Well, we'll put it by the barrel, as there is some testimony before the committee relating to that.
A. I do not know that I could answer the question and I do not know but that I would be betraying the business interests of other people. The custom for several years, in fact, for more than five years, has been that the rates of freight on shipments to the seaboard and export oil have been made by what is called trunk lines, the New York Central, the Erie, now New York, Lake Erie and Western, the Pennsylvania, and Baltimore and Ohio. The general freight agents are the officers who make those rates, and their Western connections share in them. I do not know how the freight which is paid for services rendered is divided between their Western connections, having no means of knowing that at all. We do not make any contracts with the Lake Shore for the rates of freight, and the same is equally true of the Atlantic and Great Western. These are the only two roads we ever ship by—I may be wrong; we ship some by way of Pittsburg, over the Cleveland and Pittsburg or over the Baltimore and Ohio.
Q. Do you know what the open rate, the published rate is to the seaboard by the barrel?
A. To Boston and New York, $1.54½; to Philadelphia and Baltimore, $1.29½.
Q. Now, Mr. Flagler, you have used your pencil to arrive at that conclusion, why was it necessary to figure out that matter if there is a published rate?
A. Simply because I do not keep that thing in my mind and had to call upon my memory for the way the thing is got at. I got at that by deducting what is called the crude rebate. Nobody pays the crude rebate which is 45½ cents. Whether that form is kept up by the railroad companies I do not know, but my impression is it is not.
Q. It is a fact, isn't it, that you do get a lower rate and pay less freight than the published rate? I believe it is in evidence that the open rate of freight to the seaboard will average about $1.65.
A. I have never seen the freight tariff, if you mean that which is known as the schedule rate published for the public. I have not seen anything of the kind and do not know anything about it.
Q. What inducement does your company offer to the railroads or what propositionsare made by the railroads to your company ? Now, I refer to the testimony given by Mr. Hills in regard to the carrying of oils, etc., what inducements do the railroad companies give whereby they lower your rate of freight?
A. They do not give us lower rates of freight for any consideration of that kind.
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