be considered afterward. On many large railroads there arc stations of no particular importance in size, which may also be reached by a river or by the sea. As they are not markets for any considerable territory, but have grown from restricted local requirements, they are not to be compared with other important depots on the same water route. Such a place offers no more traffic to the railroad than many other local stations to which the railroad is the only means of transportation. The argument then, that the railroad should reduce its rates on account of an unusually large traffic, is foreign to the fact. The shippers simply demand that rates shall be unusually low, or the traffic will take the route by water. The terms offered to the railroad are, to take the traffic, say for illustration, at one half the rates which are charged to other places on the road of equal distances, or not to take it at all. Now, in considering the discriminations between things, we have seen that in taking traffic thus offered as compared with not taking it, the only items of expense which would be affected are connected with the cost of carriage. In either case the fixed charges must be borne by the remaining traffic. And we have also shown, in illustration, that the fixed charges in the average case may be roughly stated at two thirds of the total cost, so the traffic offered at half rates would afford a small profit above the cost of carriage. To the railroad, then, the case resolves itself into the simple question whether it will take what it can get, or go without. There is no hesitation as to the decision: the rate demanded is given from necessity.
That this is a source of no injustice to the less fortunately located places is shown from their history. Before the construction of the railroad the non-competitive points—or as many as existed at that time—were supplied with transportation solely by the slow and expensive means of animals and wagons. The construction of the railroad reduced the time and the cost of transportation to a fraction of the former amount. Along the line new towns sprang up, and both the old and the new increased in population and prosperity by the impulse to production and industries furnished by cheaper and quicker transportation. By the construction of the railroad the places which existed before increased many times in wealth and population; while to the same cause the numberless other places owe their existence. These facts are among the most prominent of the unprecedented material development of this country during the last half-century. The railroad has been to the inland places of immeasurably more benefit than to any others. It is, in fact, for these that it was constructed. The places on the water-routes were already supplied with a cheap and sufficiently rapid means of transportation; they were but incidentally passed by the railroad in the course of its extension. With the water route the highway is furnished by nature, to the inland place it is supplied by man. The traffic must in each case alike pay the cost of carriage; but, the water-route being free to all, no toll to points on it can be
