1. “There would be little or no classification of freights. Grain, lumber, coal, iron, shoes, dry goods, groceries, drugs and chemicals, would all have to pay near about the same rate per 100 pounds per mile, and that rate would have to be something like an average of the present rates charged upon the different classes of freight. The higher classes of freight would be a good deal lowered, and the lower classes would be materially raised. The result would be that cheap and heavy products could be no longer transported over the distances that are now carried. 2. “The rates on through freight would have to be proportioned very nearly to the distance hauled. The rate from Chicago to Boston for instance, would be materially higher, and the rate from Chicago to Baltimore materially lower than the rates from Chicago to New York. 3. “Roads having the lowest grades, and most favourable alignment would have lower rates than their competitors, and would monopolise the business, to the entire exclusion of those lines which traverse more difficult and expensive territory, and upon which the cost of transportation was greater. And the tide once turned, the evil would multiply itself; for the rates would decrease rapidly on the favoured roads, with the increase of business, and would increase on the unfortunately located roads, with the decrease in volume of their freight, until the latter would be left with nothing but their local business to support them, which would then have to be advanced to the highest figures possible.”--_Railroad Transportation, by E. P. Alexander, Vice-President of the Louisville and Nashville Railway Company._ Some advocates of the theory of mileage rates may concede that their adoption would entail loss on certain districts and to some individuals, but deny that the community as a whole would suffer.[13] Is this a reasonable view? Even if the home trade were not injured, the result of equal mileage rates must be to increase the cost of production of many articles manufactured at a distance from ports of shipment. Would not this make competition with foreign countries more difficult than it is? And must it not reduce the demand for labour? [13] Very recently the fishermen in the North of Scotland have been asking that the same gross rates shall be charged from Wick to large towns in the South as are charged from the fishing ports, such as Grimsby, on the East Coast of England. What would they, or most consumers of fish, say to equal mileage rates?