Our purpose is not to pass judgment on any one, but merely to call attention to the possible effect of such practices upon the process of industrial development. Centralization, or concentration of population, industry and wealth is characteristic of all progressive peoples at the present time. Great economic advantages, through division of labor and cheapened production, have resulted; but, on the other hand, manifold evils have followed in its train. Sometimes it appears as if American railway practices, in granting commodity and flat long-distance rates so freely, operated in some ways to retard this tendency. But the influence is not all in that direction. Many staple industries, utilizing the raw material at their doors, might supply the needs of their several local constituencies, were it not that their rise is prevented by long-distance rates from remote but larger centres of production. Denver, in striving to establish paper mills to utilize its own Colorado wood pulp, is threatened by the low rates from Wisconsin centres. Each locality, ambitious to become self-supporting, is hindered by the persistency of competition from far away cities. This is particularly true of distributive business. The overweening ambition of the great cities to monopolize the jobbing trade, regardless of distance, has already been discussed. And it follows, of course, that the larger the city the more forcibly may it press its demands upon the carriers for low rates to the most remote hamlets. The files of the Interstate Commerce Commission are stocked with examples of this kind. The plea of the smaller cities and the agricultural states--Iowa, for example--for a right to share in the jobbing naturally tributary to them by reason of their location, formed no inconsiderable element in the recent popular demand for legislation by the Federal government.