for the communities engaged in the business. On the other hand the Southern Pacific is more largely interested in the local development of manufactures in California. The Rock Island by maintaining a lower rate on flour than on wheat, would tend to hold its clients in the field. The Southern Pacific, on the other hand, by securing the reduced rate on the wheat from Kansas would materially advance the welfare of its constituents. Thus the rivalries of the competing localities immediately become the direct and immediate concern of rival railways. Cases precisely analogous in principle to those concerning the relativity of rates on grain and grain products have troubled the carriers for years in respect to the rates upon cattle and packing house products.[112] A low rate on cattle as compared with beef favors Chicago today as against Missouri river points, the latter being nearer the cattle ranges; just as a generation ago it enabled cattle to be brought to New York and Boston to be there slaughtered and sold on the spot. The history of this controversy throws much light upon the difficulties of rate making in practice. Originally the railways encouraged cattle raising by a rate which was only about one-third of the rate charged for beef. Slaughtering was carried on in the East adjacent to the great markets. To this policy the western packers objected strenuously. They demanded a relatively low rate on their finished product in order to enable them to bid against the local eastern slaughter houses. The stockmen, on the other hand, naturally desired a continuance of the low rate on cattle, as it perpetuated competition between eastern and western buyers. The controversy between the stock raisers and the packers was thus shifted onto the shoulders of the traffic managers of the railways. The dispute culminated in 1883 when the Trunk Line Association appointed a special committee to consider what the proper adjustment should be.