A sixth and final reason for diversion of traffic from the direct line may be partly sentimental, but none the less significant. It concerns the question of competition at abnormal distances. We may cite two railroad witnesses, who aptly describe the situation. "We can haul traffic in competition, and we frequently do, as I stated, at less than cost, or nearly so, in order to hold the traffic and our patrons in certain territory--Kansas City for instance--but we do not like to do it."[303] Or again, "The Charleston freight is not legitimately ours.... We make on these through rates from Chicago to Charleston, for instance, scarcely anything. But it is an outpost. We must maintain that or have our territory further invaded."[304] In other words, the circuitous or over-long distance haul is a natural though regrettable outcome of railroad competition. * * * * * What are the effects of this American practice of unduly disregarding distance as a factor in transportation? Not less than five deserve separate consideration in some detail. It inordinately swells the volume of ton-mileage; it dilutes the ton-mile revenue; it produces rigidity of industrial conditions; it stimulates centralization both of population and of industry, and it is a tax upon American production. One cannot fail to be impressed with the phenomenal growth of transportation in the United States, especially in recent years. It appears as if its volume increased more nearly as the square of population than in direct proportion to it.[305] But do these figures represent all that they purport to show? Every ton of freight which moves from Chicago to San Francisco over a line one thousand miles too long adds 1000 ton miles to swell a fictitious total. Every carload of cotton goods hauled up to Chicago to be redistributed thence in the original territory and every ton of groceries or agricultural machinery exchanged between two regions with adequate facilities for production of like standard goods contribute to the same end. How large a proportion of this marvellous growth of ton mileage these economic wastes contribute can never be determined with certainty. That their aggregate is considerable cannot be questioned.