Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/608

590 policy leads to the establishment of such rates as will add to its permanent value. A temporary rate at but the cost of carriage, if necessary to establish or develop an infant industry which would in future furnish a profitable traffic, is thus justified by self-interest. To a steamer or vessel on the lakes, on the other hand, the development of the surrounding territories means but additional competition; an increase of traffic is met by an increase of boats. Their policy is to take from the traffic at the time all that can be secured, for to-morrow it will be carried by some one else.

The new supply brought to the market from a distance reduces the selling price of the article in the market, a result unfortunate to those producers nearer the market, who theretofore monopolized the trade, but fortunate for those at a greater distance who would otherwise have no market, or a more restricted one, for their products. The more important result, however, is to the general public, who are benefited through the discrimination by a reduction in the cost of the necessaries and common comforts of life; for the articles carried to the market in the greatest quantities are those which are consumed in the greatest quantities—they are the necessaries and common comforts; and, as has been already shown, it is in favor of these things particularly that discriminations are made.

III. A third cause of discrimination between places is found in the volume of the traffic. The effort of the railroad to increase its profits, by increasing its traffic through the incentive of lower rates, has already been dwelt upon in considering discriminations between things. It affects places as well. It is the principle of development, and so works upon all the traffic of a railroad and between all places. But it affects most those things or places in which there is the possibility of the greatest development. A familiar illustration of the operation of this rule is the suburban passenger traffic which has been already mentioned. The possibility of developing the travel between a great city and its suburbs is practically unlimited; accordingly every incentive is offered as to frequent and rapid trains and low rates. But between two small towns the same service and rates would be a manifest absurdity. No possible inducement, short of a payment to the passenger instead of a charge, could make any material increase in the travel, except that which slowly results from the natural increase of wealth and population. Similar causes affect the rates on freight. As things consumed in the largest quantities, in which the traffic is most capable of development, are the most favored as to rates, so also are places which consume or are markets for the greatest quantities of things. In all cases when discriminations of this nature are made in freight rates, it is where the lower rates will afford a larger net profit than the higher rates, by an increase of traffic in a greater ratio than the increase of expense. Such low rates, then, can not be at the expense of higher rates to other places. Though they may be below the