Chicago, usually before daylight the next morning. The group rate enabled the farmer at the extreme eastern limit of the producing district to reach the market practically as quickly and at the same cost for transportation as the producer in the immediate environs of Benton Harbor and St. Joseph. In short, this admirable arrangement under which the traffic was conducted brought the entire fruitproducing commurity very close to the consuming market on terms that were apparently satisfactory.

The complainant's wharf at Benton Harbor is at the foot of Seventh street. During the fruit-shipping season of 1906 the fruit cars were first taken to the wharf of the Graham & Morton Line, where the fruit consigned to Chicago over that line was unloaded. The car was then set at a point in Water street about two blocks from the wharf of the complainant, and from that point such fruit packages as were to be taken to Chicago by the complainant were carried to its steamboat. But when lake navigation opened for the season of 1907, the defendant, while continuing the through routes and joint rates with the Graham & Morton Line, refused to renew the arrangement with the complainant. It has declined also to enter into any arrangement with the complainant for the present year. The complainant has accordingly filed this application. The matter was heard quite fully and the record presents for consideration two questions, one of law and one of fact. We shall first consider the question of law.

The defendant has no rail connections and its line lies wholly within the state of Michigan. It can therefore participate in interstate commerce and become subject to the provisions of the amended act to regulate commerce only by entering into some arrangement with a water line at Benton Harbor or St. Joseph for the continuous transportation of merchandise or passengers to an interstate point. Although it declined to enter into such an arrangement with the complainant for the season of 1907, it had such an arrangement with the Graham & Morton Line as heretofore stated. It was therefore in every sense an interstate carrier subject to the provisions of the act and to the jurisdiction of the Commission. But according to the custom of lake-and-rail carriers to take out their joint rates during the period of closed navigation these interstate rates were suspended for the winter of 1907 and the steamboats of the Graham & Morton Line were docked for the season. On the following day, namely, December 14, 1907. this complaint was filed.

The question of law which arises upon these facts is whether the Commission may entertain jurisdiction of a complaint against a common carrier which, at the time when the complaint was filed, had no connections by which it could actually carry on interstate traffic.

While answering to the merits of the complaint, the defendant also denied that it had any joint through arrangements with the Graham & Morton Line when the complaint was filed; and it therefore denied that any circumstances existed to give the Commission jurisdiction. It is to be observed, however, that it was admitted at the hearing that the cancellation in December, 1907, of the through routes and joint rates between the Graham & Morton Line and the defendant was not intended as a rupture of such relations between the two companies, but was simply a suspension of the arrangement during the period of closed navigation. It was also admitted that when the through arrangements and rates were suspended it was with the intention to restore them again the following spring. In fact, as we understand the schedule filed with the Commission in December, 1907, it does not purport to be a cancellation of the through routes and joint rates with the defendant but a mere suspension of them. And the schedule filed in March, 1908, was not the establishment of a new arrangement but merely a restoration of the old.

In our judgment the mere withdrawal of lake-and-rail rates during the winter months, in accordance with what has been the custom of carriers engaging in such traffic, with the intention of restoring them with the opening of navigation in the spring is not sufficient to take from our jurisdiction a rail line, which, like the defendant, lies wholly within one state, simply because during that limited period of time. it has no connections by which it can actually engage in interstate traffic. In such cases we hold that the jurisdiction of the Commission over the carriers is not interrupted. Moreover, the defendant not only permitted the cause to be set down for hearing, but it permitted it to come on for hearing on April 20, 1908, without moving to dismiss the complaint for want of jurisdiction. In the meantime, by a schedule duly filed and published and which became effective on March 10, 1908, the arrangement for through transportation and rates between the defendant and the Graham & Morton Line was restored for the period of open navigation during the year 1908. The defendant was therefore fully subject to the provisions of the act and to the authority of the Commission at the time of the hearing, and all phases of the matter were fully brought out in the testimony. To hold, therefore, as the defendant contends should be done, that the Commission was without authority to proceed except upon a new or an amended complaint, filed after the rates were restored, would be to give recognition to a purely technical objection that does not reach the merits of the controversy at all. With such objections we have ordinarily little sympathy. Nothing is more essential to the general welfare than the prompt adjustment of controversies involving the movement of the commerce of the coun

try; and so long as the Commission keeps within the scope of its powers and does not usurp authority not given to it by law, it is important so far as possible to lay aside legal subtleties and technicalities and to get at the real merits of such contests. Whatever may be said as to our jurisdiction when the complaint was filed, there was clearly no want of jurisdiction at the time of the hearing. We are authorized therefore, and it is our duty, to proceed to a consideration of the facts.

The question of fact that requires to be examined is whether there now exists a satisfactory or reasonable through route from the fruitproducing territory in question to Chicago. On that point much testimony was taken. It appeared that the complainant has but one steamer, and that of a capacity of only 350 tons. The Graham & Morton Line, on the other hand, has one of the largest fleets plying on Lake Michigan. Between Benton Harbor and Chicago it keeps three steamers in service during the fruit-shipping season. Most of its fruit traffic from this district is carried on the Benton Harbor. The extensive deck of that steamer permits it to load all the fruit in the open air, to the advantage of the fruit, as it is said. In this respect it differs from the complainant's steamboat, which must carry much of its load in the hold. The Graham & Morton Line enjoys another advantage that the complainant does not have. If the fruit car of the defendant should be late in arriving at Benton Harbor, there is usually time to enable it to catch the steamer at St. Joseph, where it stops customarily after leaving Benton Harbor. That arrangement thus saves the fruit consigned by that line from being held over until the next night. Its wharves at Chicago are of goodly size, but so situated that the covered dock meets the vessel at right angles and does not run alongside. This involves some delay in that instead of having to carry the fruit across the warehouse to the wagons, as would be the case were it built alongside the steamer, much of the fruit must be carried by hand the full length of the warehouse to the farthest doors, where it is to be delivered to the wagons in waiting. The wharf of that line lies near the heart of the wholesale district of Chicago, and the wagon haul to the commission-houses is therefore a short one. The wharf of the complainant is across the river and this involves a wagon haul of some blocks to the commission-houses. Nevertheless it is earnestly contended by the complainant that its wharf is so much better adjusted for prompt unloading that the commission-houses to which the fruit is consigned are able to get their shipments away and at their places of business much more promptly than is possible from the dock of the Graham & Morton Line. This statement is supported by credible testimony of repeated instances of delays at the docks of the latter line, the result of which was that the consignees were not able to offer

the fruit on the market until later in the morning, and thus lost the higher prices which are customarily to be had for the early morning offerings. On this point there was a sharp conflict in the testimony. Other commission merchants strongly asserted that they had experienced similar delays in getting their consignments away from the wharf of the complainant. Some congestions at its wharf were admitted by the Graham & Morton Line to have occurred during the season of 1906. This was attributed to the fact that during that year they had a line of boats running to Lake Superior that used the same dock in Chicago and occasionally occupied the wharf when the fruit boats arrived. The cargoes of those boats when unloaded into the dock left a limited amount of space in which to handle the fruit from Benton Harbor. The Lake Superior line of boats has now been abandoned, and it is claimed that that cause of congestion at the wharf has been eliminated. The testimony tends to show however that even during the year 1907, after that service. had been abandoned, there were some congestions and delays at the wharf, although they were infrequent.

Each of the two competing boat lines has its adherents among the fruit consumers in the territory in question and among the commission merchants who handle the fruit at Chicago. Some of the witnesses whose fruit had not been promptly delivered by the Graham & Morton Line from its wharf at Chicago testified that they would not again use that line. Other witnesses made a similar complaint of the wharf service at Chicago of the Benton Transit Company. Neither company has succeeded in fully satisfying the fruit shippers or the commission merchants. To meet the criticism made of the character of its wharf service, officials of the Graham & Morton Line at the hearing entered upon a detailed explanation of the carefully considered methods of that company for unloading the fruit packages consigned to the several commission houses, and in sorting and placing them in piles at particular doors of its covered dock, where they may be promptly secured. But the very care bestowed by it in the handling of the friut at its wharf impresses us with the thought that the conditions that surround its dock require system and regulation in order to secure prompt delivery of the fruit to the commission houses. And the proof seems to show that the system adopted is not adequate to overcome the difficulties which gave rise to it. Although the dock itself is 310 feet long, the covered warehouse on the dock that meets the vessel substantially at right angles presents a front to the vessel of only 66 feet. The warehouse runs back 160 feet along what is referred to in the record as Dock street. This frontage on the street can be opened up so as to enable wagons to back up against the openings. The carry from the boat to the openings increases in distance from the delivery doors nearest the river to the last one, 160 feet away.

This work must necessarily be done by stevedores or deck hands. The proof shows that as many as 32 wagons can back up against the openings and be loaded at the same time. But ordinarily about 150 different commission houses have wagons in waiting every morning for the purpose of getting the fruit consigned to them. Some of these dealers receive from 4,000 to 10,000 packages a day, and such consignments require a number of wagons to haul them away. This means that many wagons are kept waiting for their turn to back up to the doors for their loads. It also means that many commission houses have to wait to secure their shipments. Because of the limited loading space the company, in order to give equal and fair treatment to all its patrons, permits each commission house to load but one wagon at a time. Consignees having more than one wagon therefore have to keep them waiting for their turn. In other words, there is ordinarily a good deal of waiting on the part of consignees and there would be much more waiting and more delay if it were not for the strict enforcement of the wharf rules and regulations to which reference has been made. Notwithstanding all this care, it does happen, as was admitted by the wharf superintendent and other officers of that company, that a congestion will occasionally occur and result in a delay in getting the fruit away from the wharf. An appreciation of this fact by the officers of the Graham & Morton Line doubtless partially explains the negotiations which that company has recently entered upon with a view to securing an additional wharf elsewhere along the river front in Chicago.

Such delays as do occur would not be so important if we were dealing with a different kind of merchandise. Fruit, however, is not only a perishable commodity, but the record discloses that unless it is delivered at the commission houses very early in the morning the consignors lose the benefit of the higher early morning prices. It is true that delays happen infrequently as the dock of the Graham & Morton Line is now managed; but if it happens at all or is likely to happen and to involve shippers in a substantial loss it can not be said that the through route now existing between the defendant and that line is reasonable or satisfactory. With such a traffic, time is of the essence of good transportation and anything short of prompt service at all times can not be said to be satisfactory. In this connection it will be of interest to note the extent of the traffic carried by the complainant and by the Graham & Morton Line during the last three years. In 1905 the complainant carried 738,481 packages; in 1906 it carried across the lake 569,658 packages, and in 1907 a total of 184,133 packages. The Graham & Morton Line during the same years used two steamships, the Benton Harbor and the Chicago. These two vessels in 1905 carried an aggregate of 873,774