4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Such was the origin of discriminations. Sure of a certain amount of 

 traffic at high rates, which would contribute its full share to the pay- 

 ment of fixed charges, each railroad strove to secure additional traffic 

 at lower rates which would little more than pay operating expenses. 

 This reduction was first made in favor of articles of low value, like 

 coal, stone, or lumber, which could not be moved at all at high rates, 

 but which could furnish a large business at low rates. Here it was an 

 unmixed benefit to the public. The reduction was next applied in 

 favor of long-distance traffic ; and here also it was a good thing in 

 principle, though sometimes overdone in practice. Under the old sys- 

 tem of equal mileage rates, where the charge was made proportional 

 to the distance, it would have cost something like a dollar a bushel to 

 get wheat from the Mississippi Valley to the seaboard ; a price which 

 would have been simply prohibitory to the growth of the Western 

 States. 



There were special circumstances which led the railroads to give 

 the long-distance traffic more than its due share of favor. A great 

 deal of this traffic had the benefit of competition, either between sev- 

 eral lines of railroad, or between rail and water routes. The reduc- 

 tions in rates were made most rapidly where such competition was 

 most active that is, at the laro^e cities. The result was a svstem 

 which favored cities at the expense of the country by no means a 

 good thing. But this was not the worst. In any period of active rail- 

 road competition large shippers were almost always given lower rates 

 than small shippers. Amid the constant variation of rates, unscrupu- 

 lous men gained advantages at the expense of more honorable men. 

 Secret favors were generally given to those who least needed or least 

 deserved them. The railroad agents forgot their obligations to the 

 public as common carriers. Too often they were ready to sacrifice 

 even the permanent interests of the stockholders themselves in the 

 lawless struggle for competitive business. 



It must not be forgotten that railroad competition did some things 

 for the country which nothing else could possibly have done. It 

 taught our railroad men to handle a large business cheaply. It taught 

 them to make money at rates which would have seemed suicidal to the 

 easy-going managers who were not uoder any such stimulus. The 

 rapid reductions of charge, in other countries as well as America, have 

 been made in the stress of railroad wars. But, while railroad compe- 

 tition has been in some respects a beneficent force, it can not be trusted 

 to act unchecked. To the business community regularity and pub- 

 licity of rates are more important than mere average cheapness. Busi- 

 ness can adjust itself to high rates easier than to fluctuating ones. 

 And railroad competition of necessity makes rates fluctuate. It tends 

 to bring them down to the level of operating expenses, regardless of 

 fixed charges. If it acts everywhere, as in the case of the New York 

 Central and West Shore, it leaves little or nothing to pay fixed charges, 



