THE PROBLEMS OF TRANSPORTATION 97 



the Pacific; San Francisco and the coast cities are striving to sell 

 not only in their own territory, but as far east as possible, and Denver, 

 between the two millstones, is striving to retain a few rights on 

 account of its geographical situation. What interest in the outcome 

 have the carriers? No adjustment on general grounds of equity or 

 economy can be expected to appeal to them. Every economy in 

 transportation means for them, in fact, a loss of revenue. The only 

 satisfactory issue for them is the one that yields the most returns. 

 The result is an appeal to the state to enforce an equitable adjust- 

 ment of the matter; or, in other words, to sanction a rate adjustment 

 which shall protect each market in the possession of its own rightful 

 geographical advantages. 



Definitions of these rights, so-called, to definite territory are well 

 put in a recent case: " Every commercial city owes its existence to 

 its geographical position, giving it natural advantages which make it 

 a distributing-center or gateway for a territory, the periphery of 

 which is established at points better served by other cities possessed 

 of like natural advantages. As the original tributary territory of 

 a city increases in population and advances in development, com- 

 peting distributing-centers within this territory, having like natural 

 advantages in regard to the same, responsive to a natural demand, 

 spring into being and share in the business, each city practically 

 getting the trade to which its contiguity entitles it. Such is the 

 history of the cities of the Atlantic Seaboard, the Middle West, and 

 the Pacific Coast. " By such reasoning as this we find the commer- 

 cial zone of a city even more exactly defined in a recent case: " Tak- 

 ing into account the claims of those cities (Nashville and Knoxville), 

 the legitimate trade of Chattanooga covers a strip of territory ex- 

 tending northeast and southwest a distance of about two hundred 

 miles in length by about one hundred and twenty-five miles in width. 

 And a demand results for a rate adjustment which shall ' protect 

 this city in her natural trade rights.' ' 



At this point rises a difficulty, What are natural rights of 

 location? We may easily recognize these in the case of places like 

 New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, St. Louis, Chicago, or Minne- 

 apolis and St. Paul. A whole chain of cities from Richmond skirt- 

 ing the Allegheny chain around to Montgomery, Alabama, deter- 

 mined by the headwaters of navigation on the coastal rivers, are 

 likewise located where they are by act of God, but shall we say the 

 same of places like Indianapolis, Omaha, Denver, and Atlanta? 

 Neither one of them has any rights of natural origin. They are all 

 railroad towns, determined in location by the intersection of carriers. 

 They might have arisen anywhere within fifty or one hundred miles 

 from their present situs and have fulfilled their mission equally well. 

 Here, then, are two distinct classes of rights of location. The Inter- 



