This desirable end could never have been attained if the several competing companies had not been able to act in coöperation. The erroneous popular opinion that railway competition must be preserved in the public interest, had it been legally enforced in this territory a generation ago, would have prevented absolutely any comprehensive solution of the problem. Until Congress abandons this theory, and treats railways as essentially monopolistic, thereafter to be protected and maintained as _beneficent_ monopolies through adequate governmental supervision, the lesson of trunk line experience will not have been learned. And, finally, the interesting fact that for almost thirty years it has not been necessary to change either the main system or, in many instances, the actual rates charged thereunder, is an offset to the contention that success in railway operation is to be judged by the instability of rates, seeking to follow constantly the ups and downs of commercial conditions. Certain modifications, especially in export and import traffic, or wherever water rates have to be made or met, are, of course, inevitable. But it is absurd to reason from this that railway tariffs in the main need to be continually jostled about at the behest of the shipping public. Of course, if one railway changes its rates, all the rest must follow. That is the principal reason why many of our rate schedules have been as uncertain as the weather. But there is no reason why, if all parties in competition keep good faith and observe their tariffs, a schedule of class rates for domestic shipments should not remain practically constant. Take the rates on raw cotton from Mississippi river points like Memphis to New England cities, for example. Was any staple product ever subject to greater fluctuations in price than raw cotton, varying as it has in the last few years, from five to fifteen cents a pound? Yet through it all, good years and bad, whether for the planter or the manufacturer, the freight rate has stood unchanged at fifty-five cents per hundredweight. In the same way, within the limits hereafter to be described, the trunk line rate system has endured for a generation. Founded upon sound and, consequently, defensible principles, it has promoted good feeling between railway and shipper. And, if the changes of classification since 1900 had not been made, one may reasonably doubt whether the demand for Federal legislation would have been any more insistent throughout the eastern central states than it now is in New England. * * * * *