within thirty days; it must itself appeal to the court for the
suspension and revocation of the order, or it must suffer a
penalty of $5000 a day during the time that the order was
disobeyed. The act further gave the Commission the power to
prescribe accounting methods which must be followed by the
railways, in order to make more difficult the concealment of
illegal rates and improper favors to individual shippers. This
extension and strengthening of the authority of the Interstate
Commerce Commission was an extremely valuable forward step, not
only as concerned the relations of the public and the railways,
but in connection with the development of predatory corporations
of the Standard Oil type. Miss Ida Tarbell, in her frankly
revealing "History of the Standard Oil Company", which had been
published in 1904, had shown in striking fashion how secret
concessions from the railways had helped to build up that great
structure of business monopoly. In Miss Tarbell's words, "Mr.
Rockefeller's great purpose had been made possible by his
remarkable manipulation of the railroads. It was the rebate which
had made the Standard Oil trust, the rebate, amplified,
systematized, glorified into a power never equalled before or
since by any business of the country." The rebate was the device
by which favored shippers--favored by the railways either
voluntarily or under the compulsion of the threats of retaliation
which the powerful shippers were able to make--paid openly the
established freight rates on their products and then received
back from the railways a substantial proportion of the charges.
The advantage to the favored shipper is obvious. There were other
more adroit ways in which the favoritism could be accomplished;
but the general principle was the same. It was one important
purpose--and effect--of the Hepburn act to close the door to this