These three features of the transcontinental rate structure, namely, that rates between the Atlantic and the Pacific seaboards are low, that the lowest rates are charged only to selected towns, and that rates to places other than terminals are made by combination upon the terminals, are the elements which have given character to this adjustment, and are therefore the points in it which are best known. To make a statement of the broad outlines of the plan complete, however, two other statements must be added. Group System in the East The first additional characteristic of transcontinental rates is that on eastbound business, particularly in the case of the products of California agriculture, the same rates are applied from intermediate as from terminal points. This is to place the shipping communities of the state all upon an equal footing. The second feature has reference to conditions upon the eastern end of the transcontinental haul, rather than upon the western. In the eastern part of the country the system of terminal and intermediate rates is not applied upon transcontinental business. Instead, it has been customary to divide the area east of the Rocky Mountains into a series of great groups, now ten in number, and to quote to each of these groups rates which are either the same in all cases, or which increase as the distance grows greater. This failure to apply in the East the same principles which govern in the West has been doubtless due to the insistence of cities like Chicago that her rates be at least as low on shipments to and from the Pacific Coast as the rates which New York enjoys, as well as to the desire of railroads which begin at Chicago or the Mississippi-Missouri River to encourage the growth of business in the Middle West. Mr. Huntington was credited with the desire to establish rates from the Missouri River which should be lower than rates from New York, and the reasons which were in his mind may easily be imagined. Such rates were actually in effect between 1887 and 1894, but the principle of graded charges was abandoned as a result of a rate war which broke out in 1894.[397] Terminal Points This brief description of a complicated rate adjustment will show that in through as well as in local rate-making the Central Pacific management yielded to the unequal pressure of competition, and particularly of water competition, at different points. Generally speaking, the most important of all the forms of competition which the company had to meet was water competition. Common alike to local and to through transportation, this was important because it was difficult to control, because it operated on a low cost basis, because it offered transportation facilities to a very wide variety of classes of goods, and because its possibilities for expansion were indefinite.