In both cases black workers were more heavily employed by railroads during the early twentieth century than they were by mid twentieth century. The labor markets were also more heavily regulated in the mid twentieth century than earlier in the century; and it could hardly be argued that there was less racism prevalent in the earlier era than the later era. This example illustrates the concept that the freer a market is, the greater the costs of discrimination, which decreases the incentive to be discriminatory. In fact, some of the strongest opponents of segregation in the United States were the railroad companies. They opposed segregation because it would increase their operating costs thereby decreasing their