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THE LOG MOVEMENT TO THE MILL. It may be well at this point to make a brief reference to the haul of logs to the mill. Lumbering is one of the primary occupations and lumber products are as necessary and even more widely used than are the products of coal mines. Lumbering processes are more or less familiar to everyone. The forest must be made into logs and the logs must be drawn to the mill and there converted into lumber. Whether this is done with ox teams or horses, on wagons or sleds, or the logs are floated down a stream to the mill or are carried there in flumes or otherwise, the service that the Iumberman thus performs for himself is industrial and not a service of transportation. When the adjacent timber has been manufactured there is an economy in reaching the more distant timber by the use of rails and locomotives, and these appliances are often used in the larger operations. But the character of the thing done is not affected by the new means employed to do it. Nor do the new appliances bear a different relation to the industry. A number of witnesses admit, and the whole record shows, that a large lumbering operation in this territory can not be conducted economically without a tap line. Tracks and locomotives are as necessary to successful results from the investment as the mill itself. One or two of the companies avail themselves of streams to float the logs to the mill, but all the other lumbering operations of any magnitude in the southwest have tap lines. East of the river, as we have seen, and in the majority of instances west of the river, they are regarded, like the mill itself, as a mere plant facility. Each of the tap lines west of the river that now claims to be a common carrier was originally operated directly by the proprietary lumber company and as a part of it. The only exception to that statement is that in the case of some of the more recent investments the tap line was incorporated and the track laid while the mill was being constructed. With one exception and regardless of the date of their construction, every tap line now before us is owned by or in the interest of a lumber company, and with one exception was built by the same people that own the forest and the mill, and with no other real object than to serve the mill as a necessary plant facility. That is their present primary purpose and use and no pretense to the contrary is made.
It is said that parts of the trunk lines now serving this territory were originally tap lines. That is true, and it may be, when the timber is cut away, that parts of this country may develop and some of the tap lines now under consideration may ultimately pass into the control of the trunk lines. This, however, can not be accepted as an excuse for the continuance of discriminations that now exist or for allowances that amount to unlawful concessions from the rates. With a very few exceptions not one of the tap lines before us would continue to operate if the mill by which, or in the interest of which it is owned should cease to run; they were all built to serve the proprietary mill and the incorporation was an afterthought developed out of the keen competition of the trunk lines for the traffic. Their real relation to the industry is primarily nothing but that of a plant facility, and such outside traffic as they are able to pick up is purely incidental. With one or two possible exceptions not one of them would have been built or would now be operated for the outside traffic only; not one of them would cease its operations if deprived of the outside traffic altogether, for it is a part, and a necessary part, of the lumber investment; and with two or three exceptions not one would continue in operation after the mill to which it belongs had been shut down. In other words, with very few exceptions they are purely plant facilities.
As we have seen, this is the theory upon which the lumber interests in general are to-day manufacturing their lumber and competing with one another in the general lumber markets. It is the theory that prevails in the yellow-pine district east of the Mississippi River, and is the theory upon which a majority of the lumbering operations west of the river are conducted. They are hauling their logs to their mills at their own cost and with facilities that they regard as a mere adjunct to and a part of the machinery of manufacture. It is clear, then, that appliances that are generally regarded by the lumber interests themselves not only as mere plant facilities, but as necessary facilities in the successful conduct of their investments, can not reasonably be held to become the transportation facilities of a common carrier merely because a lumber company has incorporated a small railroad company and turned the facilities over to it. There must be something more substantial than a mere manipulation of the situation in order to change the real relation of these facilities to the industry. As with the movement of lumber from the mill, so with the movement of the logs to the mill, we must necessarily hold that it is an industrial service pure and simple, except when performed for the lumber company over the rails and with the power and equipment of a tap line that is a common carrier not in form only but in fact as well, and here, again, we find it impossible to lay down any general rule or principle by which in all cases it may be determined whether the movement of logs from the forest to the mill is transportation under the act or merely an industrial service. Each case must stand upon its own facts. But two conditions are clearly essential in all cases: No tap line that is, in fact, a common carrier engaged in interstate commerce may haul the logs to the mill of the proprietary company free of charge, as is the case in many of the instances before us. A free service is inherently unlawful.
Nor may a trunk line set up a milling-in-transit privilege with a common carrier tap line by which the lumber rate is extended back through the mill point to the tree in the forest unless it pursues the same course with respect to forests on its own line. That would be an unlawful preference. In this lumber territory the trunk lines make net rates for a log haul over their own rails when they have the lumber movement from the mill. These rates vary, but a typical tariff now before us makes a net rate of 2 cents per 100 pounds for a log haul of 25 miles, and 2J cents for a haul of 50 miles, the established rate from the mill being collected on the outbound lumber. On the other hand, in many cases the rate adjustment with tap lines is such that the lumber rate is extended back through the mill to the tree in the forest in such a way as to include the log haul to the mill. It will suffice to say that any milling-in-transit rates pro-posed for our approval with a tap line recognized by the Commission as a common carrier must be adjusted on a nondiscriminatory basis, and the tap-line. division, as heretofore stated, must be fixed in an amount that will not effect a rebate to the industry. |
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