588 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



be considered afterward. On many large railroads there are stations 

 of no particular importance in size, which may also be reached by a 

 river or by the sea. As they are not markets for any considerable 

 territory, but have grown from restricted local requirements, they are 

 not to be compared with other important depots on the same water- 

 route. Such a place offers no more traffic to the railroad than many 

 other local stations to which the railroad is the only means of trans- 

 portation. The argument then, that the railroad should reduce its 

 rates on account of an unusually large traffic, is foreign to the fact. 

 The shippers simply demand that rates shall be unusually low, or the 

 traffic will take the route by water. The terms offered to the railroad 

 are, to take the traffic, say for illustration, at one half the rates which 

 are charged to other places on the road of equal distances, or not to 

 take it at all. Now, in considering the discriminations between things, 

 we have seen that in taking traffic thus offered as compared with not tak- 

 ing it, the only items of expense which would be affected are connected 

 with the cost of cari'iage. In either case the fixed charges must be 

 borne by the remaining traffic. And we have also shown, in illustra- 

 tion, that the fixed charges in the avei'age case may be roughly stated 

 at two thirds of the total cost, so the traffic offered at half rates would 

 afford a small profit above the cost of carriage. To the railroad, then, 

 the case resolves itself into the simple question whether it will take 

 what it can get, or go without. There is no hesitation as to the decis- 

 ion : the rate demanded is given from necessity. 



That this is a source of no injustice to the less fortunately located 

 places is shown from their history. Before the construction of the 

 railroad the non-competitive points — or as many as existed at that 

 time — were supplied with transportation solely by the slow and ex- 

 pensive means of animals and wagons. The construction of the rail- 

 road reduced the time and the cost of transportation to a fraction of 

 the former amount. Along the line new towns sprang up, and both 

 the old and the new increased in population and prosperity by the im- 

 pulse to production and industries furnished by cheaper and quicker 

 transportation. By the construction of the railroad the places which 

 existed before increased many times in wealth and population ; while 

 to the same cause the numberless other places owe their existence. 

 These facts are among the most prominent of the unprecedented ma- 

 terial development of this country during the last half-century. The 

 railroad has been to the inland places of immeasurably more benefit 

 than to any others. It is, in fact, for these that it was constructed. 

 The places on the water-routes were already supplied with a cheap and 

 sufficiently rapid means of transportation ; they were but incidentally 

 passed by the railroad in the course of its extension. With the water- 

 route the highway is furnished by nature, to the inland place it is sup- 

 plied by man. The traffic must in each case alike pay the cost of car- 

 riage ; but, the water-route being free to all, no toll to points on it can be 



