Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/833

Rh can not be so dealt with until the law is modified in a manner more radical than any yet officially suggested.

The most serious class of unjust discriminations includes those which have for their victims the entire populations of towns, cities, and even extensive districts which are made to suffer from the unfair adjustment of railway rates. Practically the whole region south of the Potomac and Ohio and east of the Mississippi has continuously suffered from discriminations of this kind through the system of making charges to a few selected cities the basis for through rates to all other points. Through rates are made to and from about two hundred of the larger towns, including Atlanta, Birmingham, Chattanooga, Vicksburg, New Orleans, and Mobile, and traffic shipped from or to all other points is charged the rate to one of these basing points plus the local rate from such basing point to final destination. In practice it is common to make the combination by the use of rates to and beyond whatever basing point will give the lowest total, whether on the line traversed by the shipment or not. Thus a shipment from Cincinnati to a point on the line from that city to New Orleans may be charged the full rate to New Orleans plus that from the latter back to the local point. The condemnation of such a system can not be too severe. It not only limits the commercial activities of the towns unjustly discriminated against and restricts the sources from which they can directly draw supplies, but by hindering their growth it retards the development of the entire section, including the cities supposed to be favored.

The manner in which competition at points served by two or more railways affects those having but one has received general recognition, and is one of the most powerful causes of the too rapid construction that has burdened the country with many unnecessary, unprofitable, and bankrupt lines. To attempt to regulate these cases by the process of taking them up singly and prescribing the alterations necessary to make the charges relatively reasonable, is a task impossible on account of magnitude. Though the relief afforded to particular places through the orders of the Interstate Commerce Commission has often been of great local importance, a large number of its decrees, including those most important, have been entirely ignored, or are now awaiting enforcement through the tedious processes of the courts. Even had the commission itself the authority of a United States court, and were there no appeal from its decisions, the town with two railways would still have an immense advantage over that with one.

In the case of the Eau Claire Board of Trade, decided by the Commission in 1892, it was contended that the rates charged on lumber from Eau Claire to points on the Missouri River were so