perhaps requiring special appliances or equipment, relatively high classification was permissible. But if they were substantially similar for purposes of carriage, no gradation in rates based upon differences in the ultimate uses to which the commodity might be put would be upheld. Such was the reasoning of the Interstate Commerce Commission in a decision, holding that fire, building and paving brick must be accorded equal rates, regardless of their differing values.[160] That the element of value is, however, not negligible is brought out in a later Federal case,[161] wherein it was recommended that cheap china, to be given away as premiums in the tea trade, be rated nearer ordinary crockery or earthenware, even though shipped in the same manner as high grade china ware. Under the official classification, chinaware is rated first class if in boxes, and second class in casks. Earthenware or crockery is carried at twenty per cent, less than third class, in small packages (L. C. L.). On the basis of mere cost of service, it would seem as if boxes of chinaware should have a lower rating than casks. Boxes stow better than casks, with less risk of breakage. But the commercial practice being to ship the finer grades of chinaware in boxes, such shipments are graded higher because the traffic will usually bear a higher rate. Thus considerations of cost of service yield to those of value. The Interstate Commerce Commission, however, noting the exceptional circumstances under which the tea company distributed its cheap chinaware, recommended a revision of the classification to meet the needs of the case; in other words ordering a greater emphasis upon the elements of the value of the service, even at the expense of relative cost of operation. Our final conclusion, then, must be this: That both principles are of equal importance; and that both must be continually invoked as a check upon each other. The tendency to the elevation of cost of service to a position of priority--rather characteristic of regulative bodies and of legislators--is no less erroneous than the marked disposition of railway managers to insist upon the universal applicability of the principle of charging what the traffic will bear. Neither will stand the test of reasonableness alone. Whether the one or the other should take precedence can only be determined by a careful study of the circumstance and conditions in each case; and in practice, the instances where either principle becomes of binding effect to the entire exclusion of the other, are extremely rare. FOOTNOTES: [119] 13 I.C.C. Rep., 319. The general investigation of wool rates is another admirable instance. 23 _Idem_, 151. [120] Wisconsin Railroad Commission, 1908. _Cf._ p. 181, _infra_.