to long delays at way-stations, causes justifying low rates on full cars in active motion on long, unbroken journeys.
Another form of allowable discrimination Mr. Fink holds to arise where a new industry awaits development, and offers all it can afford to pay—a rate somewhat under the tariff. He gives as an example a case where staves from a Western point were to be sent to England, to compete there with staves from Norway: he holds it to have been good railway policy to create freight by carrying it at a reduced figure, if it gave promise of increased business in the future, with a prospect of building up a new industry for the country.
The Anti-Monopoly League of New York, an association formed to expose railroad abuses, and to endeavor to have them corrected by political agitation and legislative enactment, has widely circulated as the policy of the Erie and New York Central Railroads a statement signed by their presidents, wherein they declare it their principle to charge all an article will bear, and at the same time stimulate its production (they probably meant, not interfere with its production). On the Central Pacific Railroad the value of a shipment of ore or merchandise affects the cost of its carriage, and at first view the fact certainly has an arbitrary look. The explanation of the somewhat carelessly stated principle is this: Ores of various values are offered to the Central Pacific road, let us say; the least valuable can-not afford to pay tariff rates, although it can pay the cost of transportation and a small percentage of return to the capital of the line. The manager decides that a little profit is better than none, and accepts the ore of small value at a reduced rate. The same principle of classification makes, dry-goods pay a higher rate than coals, just as letters cost more for postage than books and parcels; its adoption develops the utmost quantity of railroad business, cheapening the average charge, and adjusting the burden of expense to the various capabilities of the different elements of traffic. Railroad managers, on the same general principle, find it pays to develop suburban passenger and excursion business on terms much below the charges for single tickets.
Against the proposal of General Reagan and others to make a uniform rate for every mile of railroad in the country, it is very properly urged that tariffs must vary from many considerations: the indirectness of one road competing with a shorter one obliging it to charge a lower rate per mile, or do no business; the determination of freight in a single direction, as of lumber from the Wisconsin forests, which requires the hauling of empty cars northwestward; the comparatively small business of some lines such as those common in the West, which serve as mere gatherers-up for the trunk-lines and feeders of them; the cost of fuel, three times as much in some parts of the country as in others, and, at the cheapest, a main element of railroad expense; difficulties of grade, which may make a single mile more costly in maintenance and operation than ten miles of level track; contingencies of
