[Illustration: Traffic Conditions in Missouri River Territory]
The foregoing economic reasoning underlies the actual tariff system prevailing in what is known as Missouri river territory.[100] Two great streams separating at St. Louis form the eastern and western boundaries of Missouri and Iowa. All along the two edges of these states are located important river cities, each of which has more or less direct communication with every other crossing on the other river, over a complicated system of interlaced lines. There are no physical barriers, the country being plain and open. The starting point and basis of the whole scheme is the shortest direct distance between the two nearest points, namely Hannibal on the Mississippi, and St. Joseph and Kansas City on the Missouri. The situation is shown by the map herewith. At these points the two rivers are approximately two hundred miles apart. For this distance the base rate of sixty cents per hundred pounds, first class, is fixed by common agreement. Were local business only to be considered, and were the railways not competing, the rate between other points on the two rivers at greater distances apart, such as for instance, Burlington on the Mississippi and Omaha on the Missouri, might be determined on a relative distance basis, as in trunk line territory. But the commercial fact is that a large proportion of the business between all these points consists of long-distance traffic from the eastern seaboard which may cross the Mississippi at any one of these gateways between Dubuque and St. Louis on its way to the cities on the Missouri river. All of these through long-distance shipments must, of course, enjoy the same competitive rate to the ultimate western destination on the Missouri river. And, inasmuch as the rate from the east to the Mississippi crossings is everywhere the same, namely 125 per cent. of the New York-Chicago rate, it follows that the balance of the rate from these points on to the Missouri river across Iowa and Missouri, irrespective of distance, must likewise be the same. In other words, the rates between all these Mississippi and Missouri river points must be equalized, irrespective of the length of the intervening route, whether it be two hundred miles by the shortest direct line from Hannibal to Kansas City across Missouri, three hundred and fifty miles from Burlington to Omaha across Iowa, or even seven hundred miles by the roundabout line of the Illinois Central skirting both states. In brief, every railway which touches both rivers, however circuitous its route, is compelled to quote the same rate from every point on the Mississippi river to every other point on the Missouri. This rate must be the one fixed, as already described, for the shortest direct line, namely sixty cents per hundred pounds first class. Furthermore, in precisely the same way that these rates to Missouri river points from the eastern seaboard are built up and equalized, the rates from Chicago to the same Missouri river points must be kept even. The rate through from any one of the long chain of Mississippi gateways must be the same irrespective of distance. This figure, by common agreement, has for many years been twenty cents per hundred pounds higher than the rate across Illinois to the Mississippi river gateways from Chicago alone. The dominant note of this whole tariff is equalization of rates between all points in competition with one another over all possible routes. Freight thus moves freely in every direction and all markets are held on an absolute parity.[101] It is one of the most remarkable features of American commercial organization, this practical elimination of the element of distance from interstate trade over wide areas.
