And yet, bearing in mind all the disadvantages and evils of the present threefold system, the obstacles incident to the substitution of a single uniform classification for the United States grow more impressive as one examines them in detail. Our vast territory and the extreme diversity of agricultural and industrial conditions render the problem far more difficult than in the compact and more homogeneous communities abroad. The primary advantage of the present system is that each of the three existing classifications more or less clearly reflects local trade conditions in its own territory. From the point of view of transportation, the same commodity may well be able to yield widely different proportions of the total revenue levied upon the traffic of that section. For example, cotton piece goods may be rated first class in Western territory, fourth class in Southern, second class less fifteen per cent. in Official territory, and one-third of first class in the transcontinental tariffs. The reason for this diversity of treatment is that such cotton piece goods both in the South and the East are a staple product of the district. The rates, therefore, in each case are intended to foster the manufacture of cotton by according a relatively low freight rate upon its output. In the West, on the other hand, where no cotton is raised and no cotton mills exist, these goods become much more valuable, as classified, relative to other commodities. Oranges or lemons in southern California are favored by almost commodity rates in order to foster the industry in that locality. But these citrus fruits reaching New England as a luxury, may consequently there be made to contribute a much larger proportion of the railways' revenue. The East, as a rule, classifies manufactured products relatively low, inasmuch as it is the home territory for industry of this sort. But these products, when they pass beyond the Mississippi, rise almost automatically to a higher class as they increase in value to the community in which they are consumed. How different are the commercial conditions under which wool is rated east and west! In one territory it is distributed to manufacturers in small lots at way stations; in the other it moves long distances in solid carload lots.