The economic anomaly of rates actually falling progressively as the length of the haul increases is graphically well illustrated in the accompanying diagram, based upon data in the Georgia Railroad Commission cases.[222] The charges from Cincinnati to local points on all lines converging upon Atlanta equal the sum of the rates to Atlanta plus the local charges out. This holds good even on the direct line from Cincinnati through Chattanooga, as the diagram shows; yet of course it also follows that rates must again decline as the next basing point is approached in any direction; be it Montgomery to the west, Macon to the south, or even Chattanooga to the north. The only condition analogous to this in the Far West appears in those places whose rates are made up by a combination of the low water rates to the coast plus a local back eastward into the mountains. The transition from this Pacific coast combination to the system based upon the Missouri river occurs at those places where the aggregate charges from either direction become equal. Viewed as a large matter of principle the whole western system is analogous to the southern system. It is inevitable in both that intermediate points should in all cases be assessed at a higher rate than those adopted as bases.[223] The reason advanced in support of these basing point or basing line systems is that they are an outgrowth of commercial competition; in other words, that they are compelled by conditions beyond the carriers' control. Sometimes it may be the competition of widely encircling water routes--as from New York around to Galveston and up to Kansas City in the southwestern field, or to Mobile and up to Montgomery, Alabama, in the southeastern states. But, in many other cases, market competition from other centres of supply set the limit to the rate at the basing point. Missouri river cities enjoy a great advantage over all competitors, as meeting places of the ways. Generally, the low rates to the base points have been originally accorded in order to build up local distributive or industrial centres in the face of competition from older places. Nashville undoubtedly owes a large measure of its present prominence to the fact that in the old days its principal railroad gave a foothold and made a clientage for its merchants as against older rivals in Cincinnati and Louisville. Nor can it be said that this was an injury to that clientage, composed of consumers all through the adjacent countryside. Rates for these consumers were not put up, in order to build up Nashville. On the contrary, Nashville was given perhaps inordinately low rates, in order that the sum of these low rates and of the local rates out to Four Corners should be at least as low as those from Cincinnati and Louisville direct. This last argument is the main economic defence of the southern basing point system.[224] It applies equally to the advocacy of a low basing line at