One further illustration may make our point clear. At first sight it is anomalous that in the East the rates on cattle and shoes between New York and Boston are not widely different, namely nineteen cents and twenty-five cents, respectively, per one hundred pounds; while as between Montana and Chicago, the rate on shoes west bound is almost four times as great as the rate on cattle over the same haul eastward. In other words, rates on shoes in the East are at bed-rock, whereas in the West it is the cattle rates which are held at the lowest possible point. Ton-mile rates on shoes, in other words, increase progressively toward the west, while ton-mile rates on cattle rise, contrariwise, in the direction of the stronghold of manufactures. The difference between the two, however, is in the fact that the upper level of what the traffic will bear is very much greater in the case of one than of the other. Cattle, possibly, may never support more than seventy-five cents per hundredweight; while shoes can be moved under rates four times as high. Obviously any mere compromise between divergent classifications, each based upon the protection of a local constituency against competition from outside its own territory, can hardly prove satisfactory. Cotton piece goods, already instanced in this regard, if grouped as first class in the West, second class less fifteen per cent. in the East, and fourth class in the South, would hardly be adequately treated in a uniform classification for the entire country by averaging these different figures. For neither the West nor the South would be satisfied--the rating being too high to fully protect the southern mills against competitors in New England; nor, on the other hand, would the classification be sufficiently high in the West to yield the roads proportionately the revenue which goods of that character ought properly to contribute. The East, alone, lying intermediate between the other two, would not be greatly disturbed. The necessary outcome, it is predicted, of the adoption of any such average or uniform classification would be the quotation of exceptional commodity rates wherever the uniform classification was at variance with local interests. The increase in commodity ratings after 1887--now happily reversed--may perhaps be in part accounted for in this way. Any such stimulation of exceptional ratings would be a primary objection to any uniform classification for the United States as a whole. As one witness before the Interstate Commerce Commission testified, "If ever there is a uniform classification, it will take a warehouse to hold the commodity tariffs." Were such the case, far greater complexity and possible discrimination might exist than at the present time.