Nor were there lacking specific complaints to the same general effect. A San Francisco merchant explained that he had a carload rate of $1.75 per hundredweight on goods which he imported from Chicago to San Francisco. The rate on a hundredweight of the same commodity from Chicago to Fresno was $2. The local rate from San Francisco to Fresno was nearly half the rate per hundredweight from Chicago to Fresno, being in fact 90 cents per hundredweight. The addition of the 90 cents to the carload rate of $1.75 made it evident how small a chance he had to do a jobbing trade with the interior in these goods.[427] Another San Francisco dealer, a grocer by trade, was reported as saying that he had been compelled to give up his grocery business because his customers could buy directly from the East more cheaply than he could supply them. The same man asserted that his customers could save a cent and a half per pound on tobacco by dealing direct with Chicago.[428] It was unfortunate that dissension arose within the Traffic Association on so fundamental a point of policy as the proper attitude that should be taken toward interior towns, for the effect was, in spite of the best efforts of the men in control of association affairs, to deprive that body of the support of the interior. Moreover, opportunity was given to newspapers friendly to the railroads to attack the whole project as a selfish attempt on the part of San Francisco to improve her distributing position. The leading paper which took advantage of this opportunity was the _Sacramento Union_. This journal for a number of months denounced San Francisco as a city of hucksters, seeking a monopoly of the jobbing and wholesale trade of the Pacific Coast, not in the interest of the consumer, but in order to widen the margin between the cost of goods in which they dealt and the price at which these goods could be sold on the market. The charge was not fair, but the attitude of Mr. Jacobs and his friends embarrassed the Traffic Association in denying it. Traffic Manager