One side of the Savannah Freight Bureau Fertilizer case[208]--namely, the complaints of local stations on a roundabout road--brings it within our first category. The roundabout line from Charleston to Valdosta, shown upon the map at p. 648, was 413 miles long as against a direct route of only 273 miles. Kathleen, Georgia, is only 288 miles out from Charleston on this indirect line,--approximately the same distance as Valdosta, which thus corresponds to Y in the oyster case. Yet Kathleen paid a rate of $3.32 per ton on fertilizer from Charleston as against $2.48 charged to Valdosta, 125 miles beyond. But this excess distance is by an indirect route. Most of the notable English cases concerning local discrimination appear to be of the same stamp.[209] The complaints of a number of smaller places in the St. Paul-Milwaukee territory, like Cannon Falls, Lacrosse, and Northfield some years ago, reduce in part to the same thing.[210] Whether the Troy, Alabama, and Wichita, Kansas, cases belong here or in the next group is indeterminate, owing to the difficulty of comparing conditions of carriage by rail and by water, respectively. On the other hand, the set of circumstances shown in diagram B (page 219, _supra_) is of quite a different sort. The justification for the local discrimination is much less clear. Here, as before, the distant point Y enjoys a lower rate than X because of the presence of competition; but it is important to inquire both as to the nature and the amount of it. In the first case, competitive traffic from Y was _extra_ rather than normal in character, so far as the line serving X was concerned. It was relatively small in amount. Whatever surplus revenue resulted from it aided the local tariffs, including those at X, in supporting the burden of fixed expenses. This burden they were bound to bear entirely in the absence of competitive business picked up at Y. The distant point Y of course had no complaint in any event, and the chances are that X was benefited, as we have seen. But in the second case the great bulk of the traffic from Y belongs naturally to the direct line through X. It constitutes the mainstay of its business. The direct line, unlike the roundabout one, cannot withdraw from the field when rates become unremunerative. It is in this business passing directly through X to stay. Nine-tenths of the Y traffic, perhaps, moves through X in this latter case; in the former one, one-tenth would perhaps measure the proportion of the indirect line. Under this assumption, it is obvious that the question of the level of rates at Y, as determined by the presence of competition, assumes a ninefold greater importance in the eyes of X, so far as the effect upon local rates in supporting the fixed and joint expenses of the road is concerned. In any event, even the line operating under a disability supposedly earns some small net return on competitive traffic, else it would withdraw from the field. This it is in fact free