The Interterritorial Freight-Rate Problem and the South

Abstract

There is an interterritorial freight-rate problem because the country's dominant transportation agency, the railroad, has never developed into a national unity functioning for national purposes in the widest sense. The way in which our railways are organized, both physically and economically, adapts them primarily to the promotion of regional interests as against national interest. On the economic side, this situation arises from the fact that instead of having a national freight-rate structure devised to permit the widest possible flow of commerce, the country has been regionalized into five major territories and a number of minor regions for rate-making purposes. The major regions are: (i) Official or Eastern Territory which comprises roughly that area north of the Ohio River and a line running from Cincinnati to Norfolk, east of the Mississippi River, and south of the Great Lakes. This region has within its confines over half of the population of the country. The leading markets of the United States are found there. (z) Southern Territory which lies south of the Ohio River and the line from Cincinnati to Norfolk, and east of the Mississippi. (3) Southwestern Territory, found west of the Mississippi, east of the Rocky Mountains, and south of Kansas and Missouri. (4) Western Trunk-Line Territory which is north of the southwestern region, west of the Mississippi, east of the Rockies, and south of Canada. (5) Mountain-Pacific Territory which, as the name implies, contains the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast regions. Tradition and custom played a large part in fixing the boundaries of these various territories. In the early days of the railroads