President Tuttle of the Boston and Maine tells of a cargo of flour carried from the Pacific Coast around the Horn to England and then back to Boston to be delivered to a starch factory at Watertown. “A sailing vessel had gone to the Pacific coast with goods from Europe. There was some lack of a cargo for return. They found a lot of soft wheat flour there with which they loaded that vessel and carried it to Liverpool and put it in storage. Then the owner of the flour began to hunt around the world for a market, and found that within ten miles of Boston he could sell that flour to a starch factory at a profit and pay for the additional land haul of 10 miles.” “THE CHAIRMAN. It first went to Liverpool? “MR. TUTTLE. Went from San Francisco around the Horn to Liverpool and then across the Atlantic back to Boston. In order to carry that flour to Watertown, across the continent by rail, the railroads would have had to make a rate which was practically nothing, because the transportation by water is so extremely low that you cannot put the railway rate against it and make a profit. The cost of carriage of a ton of freight by a large steamer is so low that there is hardly any way to figure it. We have to meet those conditions. That is what we are doing.”[339] The low rates on imports enable European manufacturers to ship their goods to our western States more cheaply than our own eastern manufacturers can send their goods to the West. Rates on imports are frequently only a third of rates on domestic goods over the same lines,[340] and sometimes the difference is greater yet. And it is not confined to manufacturers. Thousands of acres of Kaolin mines from which the finest chinaware can be made are idle in the region round Macon, Ga., because clay can be shipped from England to Ohio factories cheaper than it can go from Macon to Ohio. Several mining companies have had to quit business because of foreign competition favored by low import freight rates. Both export and import reductions lead to serious discriminations, not merely as between our people and foreigners, but among our cities and shippers. Unscrupulous shippers take advantage of the export rates in the domestic trade, billing their freight on the export basis. Grain, for example, is “billed for export” to Chicago or New York or other centre; and then “the destination is changed in transit,” that is, after the grain or other shipment gets to Chicago or New York, the shipper stops it there, or orders it to Albany or Worcester or otherwise changes the destination.[341] The same thing is done in the packing-house trade to New York. The Vanderbilt traffic manager says: “Our domestic business does not amount to anything.” About all the dressed beef that goes east appears to be for export. When asked how the eastern territory got its dressed beef, the manager said: “I could not give you any information on that point.”[342]