Railway Rates and Charges 349 



goods are conveyed thirty miles or more to the same destination 

 both pay the same rate. 



How the general principle of a sliding scale, under which 

 the charge per ton per mile decreases with distance over twenty 

 miles, works out in practice may be shown by taking the case 

 of merchandise in Class 5, the rate for which would be 4*3od. 

 per ton per mile for a distance of up to twenty miles. For 

 the next thirty miles the rate would be 3'7od. per ton per mile, 

 for the next fifty miles y2$d., and for the remainder of the 

 distance 2'5od. If, however, the consignment travels over the 

 lines of two or more companies on a through rate, the applica- 

 tion of the scale begins over again in respect to the territory 

 of each company concerned. The greatest degree of relative 

 advantage is thus gained by the trader whose consignments 

 travel throughout on the lines of one and the same company. 



In any case, however, the effect of the principle is that 

 traders in, say, Cornwall or Scotland are enabled to compete 

 far more effectively on the London market with other traders 

 who are located much nearer to London and thus pay less for 

 rail transport, yet, it may be, do not have the same advantages 

 in respect to economical production as the trader at the 

 greater distance. The " tapering " railway rate in addition 

 to giving the companies a greater volume of long-distance 

 traffic, and bringing greater prosperity to the long-distance 

 places thus helps to establish equality in the general con- 

 ditions in regard to a particular market, whereas the equal 

 mileage rate would keep the distant trader to markets within 

 a circumscribed area, and shut him out from others at which 

 he might otherwise hope to get a far better sale. 



In the United States the effect of this " tapering " rate, 

 when applied to large volumes of traffic carried for distances 

 of 1000 or 2000 miles or even more, is to give a very low 

 average rate per ton per mile, and especially so when such 

 average is worked out for the whole of the goods and mineral 

 traffic in the country. The United States average is, in fact, 

 for these reasons, much lower than the corresponding average 

 for this country, where both the average haul and the average 

 weight per consignment are considerably less. Then, also, 

 as the charges for terminals remain the same, whatever the 

 length of haul, they make a material difference in the rate 

 per ton per mile for a haul of five, ten or twenty miles while 



