For the purpose of effecting some arrangement, a meeting of representatives of the transcontinental lines was held at Del Monte in the fall of that year. Representatives of the Pacific Coast jobbers and also of the jobbers of the Middle West were present. Both parties were heard separately and much discussion was had but no definite conclusion reached. The conference adjourned to meet at Milwaukee the following spring. The final result was a new transcontinental tariff effective June 25, 1898, which seems to have given reasonable satisfaction until attacked by representatives of the intermountain towns.[451] CHAPTER XVIII THE SAN FRANCISCO AND SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY RAILWAY Attempt to Fix Maximum Rates Properly considered, the construction of the San Francisco and San Joaquin Valley Railway was the complement of the campaign for the encouragement of water competition which the Traffic Association waged between 1891 and 1897. The plans for the subsidizing of clipper ships and for the support of steamship service to and from Panama had from first to last one grave defect—they afforded no means of distributing from San Francisco the products which dealers might succeed in having brought in by sea. That is to say, while the consuming populations of San Francisco, Sacramento, and Stockton might benefit by securing their goods at lower cost because of the activity of water competition, these cities could not extend their markets unless the sum of the through rate from points of origin to terminal city and from terminal city to local point should be made lower than the direct rate from the Mississippi Valley or the Atlantic Coast to the smaller towns in California, Nevada, and New Mexico. Now the question of local rates differed from that of through rates, in that it dealt with a matter over which the state legislature and the State Railroad Commission appeared to have complete control. In 1892 the Traffic Association accordingly made a serious attempt to persuade the state legislature to undertake direct regulation of railroad rates in California, and to insert a provision for certain maximum rates in the constitution of the state which should affect a considerable reduction in the rates then charged. This attempt failed, for reasons into which it is not necessary to go. There remained another method of influencing local rates, namely, the construction of a competing railroad which should lead from San Francisco Bay to the interior counties of the state, and to this alternative the San Francisco merchants turned in the year 1893. The movement was important, and will be discussed at some length. First Proposal for Competing Railroad