In this arrangement, the rate for each of the six different classes and all the special commodities, between New York and Chicago was made 100 per cent. Other towns, both further and less distant from New York than Chicago were given proportionate percentages, St. Louis being fixed at 117, Pittsburg 60, Cleveland 71, Detroit 78, Indianapolis 93, Peoria 110, and Grand Rapids at 100--the same as Chicago. At the eastern end of this particular bit of territory--the Official Classification--a reduction of two or three cents a hundred was made from the New York rates in favor of Baltimore and Philadelphia, a corresponding addition of two or three cents to meet the increased haul to Boston. No matter how you ship freight, these rates now hold standard, as long as the railroads remain faithful to their traffic associations. You may ship from Indianapolis to New York by way of Cleveland and Albany, by Marion and Salamanca, by Columbus and Pittsburgh, or by Cincinnati and Parkersburg, and although there is quite a wide variance in mileage between these routes, the rate is the same on all the different roads that go to form them. This standard, simple as things go in freight-rates, was not adopted in a moment. Bitter contentions on the part of cities and of shippers had to be settled before it ruled. After it ruled, it was easy for each road to build its own tariff upon it. Together these form a vast structure, one that is constantly changing, as one road or another changes its tariff under the pressure of shippers or of civic bodies, or possibly a desire to establish more equitable schedules; and the work these changes make can be imagined when it is stated that a single one of them in the Official Classification territory causes more than eight thousand changes in the rate-sheets of the railroads. The choosing of Chicago as the "one hundred per cent" city in the northeastern territory of the United States repeated the compliment to her prowess as a traffic city, that the great yards which hedge her in for miles have paid her for many years. She is one of the very greatest basing points, where multiple rates or percentages are built from the single. Most of the very important commercial cities share this distinction, which is further shared sometimes by comparatively unimportant points that happen to be the terminals of rather important railroads. Thus we find Cincinnati and Henderson, Louisville and Evansville, St. Louis and Davenport, Chicago and Peoria, Omaha and Sioux City, Kansas City and Leavenworth, all possessing this railroad distinction.