Carriage by water is so much cheaper and as compared with land transportation is subject to such different rate-governing principles, that it deserves separate consideration. Mere distance, as has already been said, being really only one element in the determination of cost, a circuitous water route may in reality be more economical than direct carriage overland. Yet beyond a certain point, regard being paid to the relative cost per mile of the two modes of transport, water-borne traffic may entail economic wastes not incomparable to those arising in land transportation. In international trade, entirely confined to vessel carriage, a few examples will suffice for illustration. Machinery for a stamp mill, it was found, could be shipped from Chicago to San Francisco by way of Shanghai, China, for fifteen cents per hundredweight less than by way of the economically proper route. Were the goods ever really sent by so indirect a route?[269] It would appear so when wheat may profitably be carried from San Francisco to Watertown, Massachusetts, after having been taken to Liverpool, stored there, reshipped to Boston, thereafter, even paying the charges of a local haul of nearly ten miles;[270] or when shipments from Liverpool to New York may be made _via_ Montreal to Chicago, and thence back to destination.[271] I am credibly informed that shipments of the American Tobacco Company from Louisville, Kentucky, to Japan used commonly to go _via_ Boston. Denver testimony is to the effect that machinery, made in Colorado, shipped to Sydney, Australia, can be transported _via_ Chicago for one-half the rate for the direct shipment; and that on similar goods even Kansas City could ship by the carload considerably cheaper by the same roundabout route. Conversely straw matting from Yokohama to Denver direct must pay $2.87 per hundred pounds; while if shipped to the Missouri river, five hundred miles east of Denver, and then back, the rate is only $2.05.[272] As a domestic problem, water carriage confined to our own territory has greater significance in the present inquiry. Purely coastwise traffic conditions are peculiar and in the United States, as a rule, concern either the South Atlantic seaports or transcontinental business. As to the first-named class, the volume and importance of the traffic is immense. Its character may be indicated by a quotation from a railroad man.