_Simple Cases of Charging "What the Traffic will Bear."_--The value of a study of primitive carriers and their policy lies in the fact that it illustrates principles which apply to transportation by a complicated system of railroads, although in this latter case they are not easily discerned. Imperfect competition is what exists in the department of carrying. So long as a railroad is without any rival it may, in some cases, charge for moving goods from one point to another about as much as the cost of making them at the latter point exceeds the cost at the former. This is the simplest case of charging what the traffic will bear. Or, again, the situation may be dominated by producers at a third point who can make goods and get them carried to the place we may term the market for less than the cost of making them directly in this latter place. In such a case the road may demand nearly the amount by which the cost of making the goods at an accessible third point and moving them to the one which is their market exceeds the cost of making them in the place first named; and this is a slightly less simple case of charging what the traffic will bear. It is appropriating the difference between two natural values neither of which the railroad itself fixes. _Charges based on Various Kinds of Cost._--The charges of the railroad may be limited by the competition of inferior carriers who use its own route, such as teamsters whose wagons use a public highway running parallel to its own track. Here charges are based on costs, but not on those which the railroad incurs. They are the costs which the teamsters incur; and if the railroad has much business, its own costs are less and it makes a profit. The charges may be based on costs incurred by more economical carriers, like owners of ships, and in such a case the rate which the railroad can get may be less than its own costs, if these are figured in the simple way of dividing a total outlay by a total number of units of freight transported. The rate is based on the shipowners' costs, and these are so low as to bankrupt the railroad if it should reduce all its charges to such a level. It reduces them thus only on the particular route where competition by water is encountered, and keeps them elsewhere at the higher level. In the case of shipments by rail over such routes "what the traffic will bear" is determined by the low charges established by the ships; and this means that it is determined by a certain definite cost of carrying goods between the very points which the railroad connects.