These practices must considerably dilute the returns per mile for service rendered by American carriers--in even greater degree than they enhance the apparent volume of transportation. Long-distance rates must always represent a low revenue per ton mile, owing to the fixed maximum for all distances determined by what the traffic will bear. Furniture made in North Carolina for California consumption[306] cannot be sold there in competition above a certain price. The greater the distance into which the possible margin of profit is divided, the less per mile must be the revenue left for the carrier. Yet this is not all. Such would be true of simply over-long distance carriage. But to this we must add the fact that some of this long-haul tonnage reaches its remote destination over a roundabout line, which increases the already over-long carriage by from twenty-five to seventy-five per cent. It is apparent at once that a still greater dilution of the average returns must follow as a result. From 1873 down to 1900 the long and almost uninterrupted decline of rates is an established fact. Has the volume of this economic waste increased or diminished in proportion to the total traffic throughout this period? If it is relatively less today, at a time when ton mile rates are actually rising, it would be of interest to know how far such economies offset the real increases of rates which have been made. Rates might conceivably rise a little, or at all events remain constant, coincidently with a fall in ton mile revenue produced through savings of this sort. The third result of undue disregard of distance is a certain inelasticity of industrial conditions. This may occur in either of two ways. The rise of new industries may be hindered, or a well-merited relative decline of old ones under a process of natural selection may be postponed or averted. The first of these is well set forth as follows:[307]