percentage of their traffic receipts into a common fund, which was divided among the companies forming the pool, according to an agreed ratio. Under this method it is evident that all incentive to secret cutting of rates and dishonest methods for stealing additional traffic from another road was taken away.
How widespread and universal is the restraint of competition by railway corporations may be seen by the following pithy words, penned by Charles Francis Adams, President of the Union Pacific Railway:
"Irresponsive and secret combinations among railways always have existed, and, so long as the railroad system continues as it now is, they unquestionably always will exist. No law can make two corporations, any more than two individuals, actively undersell each other in any market, if they do not wish to do so. But they can only cease doing so by agreeing, in public or private, on a price below which neither will sell. If they cannot do this publicly, they will assuredly do it secretly. This is what, with alternations of conflict, the railroad companies have done in one way or another; and this is what they are now doing and must always continue to do, until complete change of conditions is brought about. Against this practice, the moment it begins to assume any character of responsibility or permanence, statutes innumerable have been aimed, and clauses strictly interdicting it have of late been incorporated into several State constitutions. The experience of the last few years, if it has proved nothing else, has conclusively demonstrated how utterly impotent and futile such enactments and provisions necessarily are."