The whole of New England suffers from a discrimination of about 100 percent in freight rates, the average rate in New England being about double the average for the United States. Quoting my testimony before the United States Industrial Commission: “Another phase of discrimination was brought out very prominently in our studies in New England, and the best source of information, perhaps, is the report made by the Massachusetts Railroad Commission a few years ago (1894), in which they compared the average freight rate on New England roads, individual roads, and the average of all the roads there, showing that our rates were about double the average freight rate in the Middle States, or in the Middle West, and that it was clearly double what the average freight rate was for the whole United States, and they argued with much force that it was really a discrimination against New England as a whole, especially against Boston. One of the pleas put forward in discussing the question of leasing the Boston and Albany was that the giving over of the Boston and Albany to the New York Central control would intensify instead of relieve that sectional discrimination against New England as a whole, because the road would come under the control of those interested chiefly in the development of New York City, and not in the development of Boston and the New England States.”[324] In the Cincinnati Maximum Rate Case, involving a large number of railways and steamship lines, the Commission found discrimination between the rates from the eastern seaboard and central territory to southern points, and fixed a schedule of maximum rates from Cincinnati and Chicago to Knoxville, Chattanooga, Rome, Atlanta, Meridian, Birmingham, Anniston, and Selma, and required the railroads to revise their rates to other points in the South in conformity with the provisions of the order.[325] On appeal to the Supreme Court it was held that the order could not be enforced against the railroads, it being the opinion of the majority of the court that the Interstate Act does not give the Commission power to fix rates, such power not being expressly conferred and being too great to be implied from the prohibition of unreasonable rates and the general authority given the Commission to enforce the law,[326] so that the discrimination the Commission sought to abolish between different sections of the country is still in operation. Sectional discrimination, either intentional or unintentional, is bad enough, but there is a still wider and more objectionable form of discrimination as between the country and the big cities. The whole inland territory is made tributary to a few competing points.