Too many special commodity rates, intended to meet the needs of particular shippers instead of increasing new business, may merely bring about economic waste through exchange between widely separated markets or by causing an invasion of fields naturally tributary to other centres.[135] Whenever a community producing a surplus of a given commodity supplies itself, nevertheless, with that same commodity from a distant market, economic loss results. Numerous instances could be cited where identical products are redistributed after a long carriage to and from a distant point in the very area of original production. Dried fruits may be distributed by wholesale grocers at Chicago in the great fruit-raising regions of the West and South. Cotton goods made by southern mills may be shipped to New York or Chicago, and then sent back again for final distribution with the addition of a middleman's commission and a double freight rate. The Colorado Fuel & Iron Company seeks special rates in order to sell goods over in Pittsburg territory; while its great competitor, the United States Steel Corporation, has an equal ambition for the trade of the Pacific Slope. In another case it appeared that a sash and blind manufacturer in Detroit was seeking to extend his market in New England. Manufacturers of the same goods in Vermont were simultaneously marketing their product in Michigan. The Detroit producer did not complain of this invasion of his home territory, but objected to the freight rate from Boston to Detroit, which, probably because of back loading, was only about one-half the rate on his own goods from Detroit to the seaboard. Is not this an economic anomaly? Two producers, presumably of equal efficiency, are each invading the territory naturally tributary to the other and are enabled to do so by reason of the railway policy of "keeping everyone in business." The New England railways are compelled by reason of the remoteness to their territory to defend this policy. As President Tuttle, of the Boston & Maine, expresses it, "I should be just as much interested in the stimulating of Chicago manufacturers in sending their products into New England to sell as I would be in sending those from New England into Chicago to sell. It is the business of the railways centering in Chicago to send the products from Chicago in every direction. It is our particular business in New England to send New England products all over the country. The more they scatter the better it is for the railways. The railway does not discriminate against shipments because they are east bound or west bound. We are glad to see the same things come from Chicago into New England that are manufactured and sent from New England into Chicago." No one questions for a moment that the widening of the sphere of competition by transportation agencies is a service of incalculable benefit to the country. But it should also be borne in mind that superfluous transportation is economic waste.