The economic justice of allowing a carload shipper lower rates than one who ships in small lots is apparent, on account of the difference in the cost of such service to the railways. This has been recognized by the Interstate Commerce Commission and the courts as beyond question. Not only the amount of paying freight in relation to dead weight; but the cost of loading and unloading, of billing or collection and of adjusting damages--all of these elements of cost are noticeably less in the case of a full carload. Turning from these considerations of cost to those prescribed by what may be called traffic principles, the difficulty in arriving at a just determination may be easily appreciated. Glass battery jars in less-than-carload lots were at one time charged from New York to Atlanta, Georgia, second-class rates, namely ninety-eight cents per one hundred pounds. The same commodity when in carload shipments (not less than 20,000 pounds) was rated as fifth class; in which case the charge from New York to Atlanta became sixty cents. Here was a plain difference of thirty-eight cents per one hundred pounds--upward of sixty per cent. greater charge--to the small shipper whose business or capital was insufficient to warrant shipments to such an amount. Two results of such discrimination are possible. In the first place, the large shipper is enabled to undersell his smaller competitor and perhaps to drive him out of that class of business. This may take place as between two dealers, both located in the South and buying their supplies from New York. The second result is that under such rates it is impossible for the manufacturer or northern jobber to sell direct from New York to the retailer in the South in competition with the provincial jobber there located, who ships his goods in at the cheap carload rate and distributes them thereafter. The problem thus concerns at the same time both the small local shipper or dealer, as against a more formidable provincial competitor; and also the remote jobbers as a class against the whole group of local middlemen. In the latter case, sometimes, as in the South, the question is still further complicated by a basing point system, under which the provincial jobber re-distributes to the country stores the goods which have already been shipped in on a low carload rate.[360] And, locally, there is also the immanence in the South of water competition by sea and river to be kept in mind. Boat charges are based upon space requirements rather than weight. This introduces further important considerations in fixing the spread of charges.