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July, 1912 being the American-Hawaiian Steamship Co. In this lease the right is reserved to require the company to give accommodations to other than its own vessels, and common use of the railroad tracks is obligatory. Rates are subject to the control of the commission and statistics as to business transacted must be submitted at stated intervals. It would seem as though the commission had safe-guarded the rights of the indi- vidual shipper in the provisions of this lease. In this connection the Interstate Commerce Com- mission recently handed down an important decision in the case of the Chamber of Commerce of Mobile against the Southern railway and the Mobile & Ohio railroad, which marks quite a step forward in the abolition of monopolies in wharves and docks. To understand the importance of this decision it will be necessary to relate the circumstances surrounding the situation in Mobile. The Southern railway and the Mobile & Ohio railroad own docks at Mobile, to which they make shipside delivery on export trafic. They publish rates to and from these docks which include not only. the service of carriage to Mobile, but the supplemental service of switching to their wharves, the use of the docks and the unloading of the cars. For these services no separate terminal charge is made, the value of the service being included in the one published rate. It, therefore, cannot be ascertained how much the railway charge may be for delivery to another carrier at Mobile when the shipment is destined to some other dock. The two railways work in unity at both docks, that is to say, the Southern will deliver to the Mobile & Ohio docks and vice versa. The upshot of this arrangement was to make these docks the waterside terminals of the two railroads at which ships may call for the receipt or delivery of freight. There were ships calling at Mobile, however, that could never gain access to these docks, notwith- standing the fact that they carried freight for the railroads or were seeking freight carried by them. These ships were denied access to the docks because the docks were given over to certain preferred lines of steamships with which the railroads had made certain arrangements. These vessels were, therefore, forced to berth at other docks on the waterfront and the shipper was compelled to pay a series of charges for switching, docking and unloading, in addition to the published rate of the two railroad docks. The result of this practice was obviously to drive export trade away from Mobile. This was the Cham- ber of Commerce's first cause of complaint, but there was another and equally serious one, and that was that if freight was destined via some other wharf from an interior port, the railroads would not issue a through Dill of lading, although if the shipment passed over one of their own wharves for Europe by one of the preferred lines of steamships, such bill of lading would be issued. The answer of the railroads was that they preferred one boat line over another for their own protection, THE MARINE REVIEW 233 but the Interstate Commerce Commission did not hold this reply to be in good faith because in the first place the through bill of lading expressly limits the railroad's liability to the land haul, and in the second place steamship lines, notably the Elder-Dempster Line, which was refused through bills of lading at Mobile, were granted them at New Orleans. The text of the In- terstate Commerce Commission decision is as follows: First, where a railroad has a wharf, to which its tariffs offer delivery and at which part of the ship- ping public is served, such a wharf becomes a public terminal, and if all shippers are not given access to it by the boats they choose to employ, it then becomes the carrier's duty to make delivery at other available docks at the same rate. Second, a railroad has a right to reserve wharves for its own use and for the use of such water carriers as it prefers, provided it affords to the public access to facilities elsewhere at equal rates. Third, where a rail carrier making a rate to a port institutes a practice of authorizing its agents to issue bills of lading for water lines, it must extend such practice to all water lines under reasonable regulation. The report of the Interstate Commerce Commission was prepared by Commissioner Lane, who concludes as follows: © "This, then, are the things desired by the Mobile Chamber of Commerce; that the Southern and the Mobile & Ohio railroads shall make all wharves in Mobile serviceable to the export and import traffic of that port, either by making the expense of shipside delivery the same' to all, or by separately stating the nature of the terminal service given by the railroads in what is known as shipside delivery, and establishing separately the charges therefor, so that those shippers who do not wish that service or cannot get it by these railroads, but do wish similar service elsewhere, may not be forced to pay extra therefor; and that in any event through bills of lading, if given via one route, shall be given via others within reasonable limitations. "We are persuaded that where a railroad has a wharf at which its tariffs offer delivery and at which part of the shipping public is served, but to which it does not give all access, it must make delivery at the same rate at some other wharf." This .decision affects every port in the United States. The Interstate Commerce Commission took the view that if the Mobile & Ohio and Southern rail- roads could in Mobile say to what wharves and docks they would deliver export trade--for it practically amounts to that when an additional charge to the regular tariff is made for delivery to other wharves-- that any railroad in any port could do the same thing, and only such traffic would move through the port as the railway saw fit to give it, with the result that the millions expended in harbor improvements by the general government would be for the exclusive benefit of railroads controlling the terminal situation. The ruling went into effect July 1.