This special contract plan was objectionable to shippers for three reasons. In the first place, it seemed likely to increase the rates which they would have to pay. Although the railroad undertook at the inception of the scheme to meet existing rates by water, at least to such an extent that the total expense to shippers who made special contracts with the railroads would not be increased, it needed no great prescience to foresee that the exclusion of water carriers from the business of the Pacific Coast would sooner or later bring about an increase in transcontinental rates. When special contracts were offered to merchants in Stockton, Los Angeles, Marysville, and Sacramento, San Francisco importers made the additional complaint that their natural advantages as residents in a seaport town were neutralized. In the second place, the administration of the plan required a supervision over the business of individual dealers which was extremely distasteful. It was asserted that the railroads placed men on the wharves to take the marks of goods brought in by sea, that they followed up the drays to see where the goods went, and that they inspected the books of merchants to make sure that importers who had signed contracts had no dealings with firms who still patronized the shipping lines. Nor was this a casual abuse, but a necessary feature in the plan. Again, the system lent itself to discrimination. Mr. Stubbs insisted that contract rates were open to all shippers, large or small, who would sign the necessary papers, but it was not denied that the first arrangements were made with large dealers only,[379] nor that during at least one period the whole scheme involved the abandonment of a published and open tariff in favor of a system of bargains in which each shipper’s rate was individually and secretly determined. Under such a plan it was inconceivable that discrimination should not develop. Ostensibly the offer of a special contract was one which shippers were free to accept or to reject as they saw fit. Practically, this was not so. If A took a contract and B did not, the latter’s ability to compete was seriously impaired. For B had to import some things by rail in any case, while the fact that less business in the aggregate reached the Pacific Coast by sea reduced the shipping facilities which B otherwise would have had at his command.[380] Transcontinental Traffic Stimulated Special contracts seem to have been a distinct success from the point of view of the western carriers. When they were introduced the percentage of transcontinental freight carried by the rail lines was small, probably not over 25 per cent of the whole. At the end of six years under the new system this percentage had risen to between 60 and 75 per cent.[381] The change was certainly not entirely due to the policy of special contracts, but part of the change may be attributed to the plan.