The carriers were not, however, so ready to recognize the interruption of canal traffic as they had been prepared to take notice of its beginning, and in spite of slides and war conditions which suspended water competition, it took an order of the Interstate Commerce Commission to secure an equality in the treatment of intermountain and seaboard cities to which the former in accordance with the fundamental theory of transcontinental rates were entitled under the new conditions.[413] In forming an opinion upon the rate system of the Central Pacific, however, too much weight must not be attached to inconsistencies in application so long as these are not altogether arbitrary, any more than to the demand of competing cities for their “fair share” of the business that is to be done. City ambitions are limitless, and impossible to reconcile. The question is not how to determine the territory within which a given city may be said to have a right to distribute its goods, but whether or not the rate system introduced by the Huntington group, all things considered, promotes the interests of the territory which is served better than some system that may be suggested. Basing Rate System Necessary It is the writer’s opinion that the transcontinental rate system has always had evident defects. In the first place, it has generally provided low rates to towns and it has quoted low rates on commodities which have no access to the water routes. In the absence of competition the distance principle should prevail. Second, it has often failed in the past to make concessions to the cost basis of rate-making, which would have removed complaint without altering the plan in principle, such concessions, for example, as the reduction of rates to interior points to something less than the sum of through and local rates to allow for the relatively small amount of terminal service rendered. And, finally, it has increased the amount of transportation incident to the distribution of a given amount of freight. While the assertion of cities without terminal privileges that they have the right to do a specified amount of business is to be received usually with skepticism, it does seem probable that the transcontinental railroads would have reduced the aggregate cost of distributing transcontinental freight had they encouraged more than they did the growth of the interior towns, provided that they had supported these towns both against Chicago and St. Louis and against the Pacific Coast.