The entire puzzling class of cases dealing with the southern basing point system are primarily concerned with such issues as these.[95] Three distinct classes of cases arise. There is, first, the competition between cities of equal size, be they large or small, such as Memphis, Tenn., and Little Rock, Ark.; Danville, Va., and Lynchburg; or Cleveland, and Cincinnati, Ohio: secondly, the rivalries between large cities and what may be called secondary local centres in the same part of the country,--such as Seattle, Wash., _v._ Spokane; Chicago _v._ Burlington or Dubuque, Iowa; or Atlanta, Ga., _v._ Macon: and thirdly, the intense rivalries between the great first-class cities, like New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, and the rest of the field, big and little.[96] The mail order houses, the express business and the parcels post intervene at this point. But in all of these issues, series of no less than three separate transportation costs have to be totalized and kept more or less on a parity. The intricacy is increased by reason of the fact that shipments must be made, first at wholesale to the jobbers, and thereafter usually in less-than-carload lots to retailers. If the carload rate be relatively too low, with reference to the rate on small lots, the jobbers near the market will be upbuilt and the jobbers at a distance cannot compete. If the opposite relation obtains, the jobber in a distant great city will be able to ship out small orders cheaper than the local dealer can obtain them by carload and, breaking bulk, peddle them from his own town. So narrow is the margin of profit on staple goods that a difference of a fraction of a cent per pound may exclude a dealer from the field entirely. This question of carload ratings is, however, treated elsewhere; impinging, as it does upon matters of freight classifications.[97]
The rivalries of jobbers and middlemen in different cities are inevitably borne into the offices of traffic managers. Were all railways equally interested in all cities alike, the matter need not go further, engendering railway rivalries. But such is seldom the case. Hardly a road can be named, whose interests are not more or less identified with some particular city. Commercial rivalry thus at once leads to railway competition. Four or five railways, like the Chicago and Northwestern, radiate out to the west from Chicago, and have no interest in St. Louis. Almost as many, like the Missouri Pacific, go out from St. Louis without entering Chicago. Others, like the old Union Pacific and, formerly, the Atchison system, only come to the Missouri river, and consequently wish to upbuild their eastern termini, Omaha or Kansas City. Only a few, like the Illinois Central, reach them all. Such a road is usually called upon to act as a mediator in all disputes. "It is a continual struggle between the line from Kansas City to St. Louis with no interest in Chicago, and the line from Kansas City to Chicago with no interest in St. Louis," as one witness before the Industrial Commission phrases it. Compromise is the only outcome. And in this manner an involved structure of differentials is built up, oftentimes top heavy and always susceptible of collapse on the defection of any party to the agreement. When a truce was patched up between the trunk lines and the Gulf roads after the sugar rate war of 1905, it is said to have taken twenty experts three entire days merely to "line up" rates on a parity between the competing jobbing centres.