96 TRANSPORTATION 



would be the ideal distributive system supposing the matter were 

 referred for decision to an omniscient governmental commission 

 with power? Precisely such issues are already before the Interstate 

 Commerce Commission. The immediate question may be a tech- 

 nical one, such as relative rates upon car-load or less than car-load 

 lots, or the relation between rates upon raw and finished products. 

 But underlying these technical details the real question pertains to 

 the relative rights of competing centers in certain territory. 



Many elements in settling trade rivalry are, of course, .entirely 

 independent of transportation cost. Among such are native or 

 imported enterprise, available capital, and the like; but aside from 

 these the most important artificial factor is the adjustment of freight 

 rates. 



There is a larger amount of waste due to a neglect of the element 

 of distance in transportation than most people appreciate. It is 

 wonderful how circuitously freight will travel, in order to reach a 

 certain point, when once loaded on the cars or vessel. More than 

 this, districts may even buy their supplies of the very things which 

 they produce, not from themselves, but through a distant distribut- 

 ing-point. Arkansas is a great fruit-growing state, yet wholesale 

 grocers are selling dried fruits from Chicago throughout its own 

 fruit-growing territory. Some years ago one of the most enter- 

 prising shoe jobbing-houses in Virginia, doing business throughout 

 the Southern States, was shipping its shoes made in New England 

 to customers, not as the bird flies, but back through New York. 

 It is not very many years since interior points in the South were 

 supplied with Western produce in part by goods which traveled 

 three quarters of a circle, going east over the trunk lines to New 

 York and then down the coast and away west into the interior. 



Such facts illustrating the extreme fluidity of freight are familiar 

 to all students of this subject. As a deplorable waste in transpor- 

 tation, they are usually charged up to the carriers. Less attention 

 has been given to corresponding waste in transportation due to 

 unregulated competition, not of carriers, but of buyers and sellers 

 themselves in the ordinary course of business. 



We buy hoes, rakes, and shovels in Massachusetts made in Iowa, 

 while the greatest manufacturers of some of these products, selling 

 goods all over the world, are situated within our own state. Nash- 

 ville, Tennessee, is selling Northern goods not only as far south as 

 its rival, Chattanooga, but beyond and all around it. Chattanooga, 

 in its turn, would like the privilege of similarly cutting into terri- 

 tory which its rivals enjoy. A great struggle in the Western field 

 illustrates the same difficulty. A bitter competition has long 

 been waged for distributive business between the Middle West and 

 Pacific Coast. St. Louis and Chicago are seeking markets out on 



