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Reader comment on: The Western Coal Traffic League Versus Buffett

Submitted by Lyle (United States), May 21, 2011 01:25

Shippers have always said that railroads take advantage of them. The Grange was about it, the whole movement that lead to the ICC was about it. The evil railroad sets the rates at the point where the shipper can just survive no more (Said of the SP under Collis P. Huntington et al). Interestingly the ICC kept rates down before 1917, but once the Federal Government took over the railroads in 1917 the rates rose as the shippers lost influence to the needs of the war. The surface transport board is all that is left of the ICC which led to the railroads almost dying in the 1970s.

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