making their shipments direct in small lots at rates approximately as low as the local jobbers pay on carload lots. This question is an exceedingly important one, requiring the balance of opposing interests to a nicety. Not unfamiliar aspects of the problem of carload rating are revealed in a recent case before the Interstate Commerce Commission, concerning milk rates in New England.[362] And yet the normal order is reversed. Usually, complaint is made of the denial of carload ratings. In this instance a plea was entered for a useable small unit rate as against the wholesale charge. The dispute was precipitated by a deadlock in 1910 between the three large Boston milk contractors and the farmers' associations of several states. The producers, failing in their demand for an increased price, declined to furnish milk at the old figure. A famine resulted, which drew the attention of the public sharply to the system under which the Metropolitan district of Boston was supplied. The belief prevailed that the peculiar transportation conditions known as the "leased car system" which had existed for half a century, was mainly responsible for the tight monopoly of the milk supply. Under this arrangement specially low charges were allowed to those who made shipments regularly by the carload. The Massachusetts legislature, after an investigation, finally passed a law providing that no carrier should charge more for the transportation of milk by the can than was charged for larger quantities; and also that the same facilities, icing, for example, should be furnished in the one case as in the other. This settled the intrastate charges; but it left matters as before for all the other New England states contributing to the market. In this form the controversy was brought before the Federal authorities, which exhaustively considered the methods of transportation as affecting all parties concerned. The contrast with the older elastic situation as to milk ratings in New York was sharp in many respects.[363] This earlier controversy had to do mainly with the relative rights of nearby and distant producers. It was a question of the element of distance as affecting a local or territorial monopoly. The Boston case, on the other hand, was rather a matter of carload ratings than of graduation of charges according to the length of the haul. The monopoly in this instance was that of contractors who had succeeded in getting entire control of the business by reason of the wide spread between charges for milk by the can and by the "leased car." Shipments by the can from the independent farmer were rendered practically impossible since they had to be carried in the baggage car and were liable to spoil through lack of refrigeration.