The record-union., 1891-10-26
SAN FRANCISCO UNMAsKs.

The press of San Francisco is by far
the most provincial upon the continent
The widening of a street, the laying of a
poultice pavement, the rate of taxation
any small local interest or issue, how
ever petty, viii fill the columns of our
metropolitan contemporaries with the
most agoniZing sensations. The Traffic
Association appeared for time to be some
what broader than San Francisco. There
was even expectation that it might in
clude Goat Island, or that its boundaries
might be extended to take in the Oakland
Mole. But the Chronicle dispels all these
illusions. In its issue of October 23d
that paper says:
AS to making joint enterprise of the
association, to include the interior as well
as the city. the more the scheme is discussed
the more impracticabie it appears
The reason for this is that San Fran
cisco desires to be distributing center
for territory through which a trade has
once been carried. In order to do this, it
asks that the rate shall be lower to San
Francisco than to Sacramento, Stockton,
Reno or any other place in the interior
San Francisco is fast losing its metro
politan position and the Traffic Associa-
ton was intended to regain it.
The Chronicle proceeds:
San Francisco must work alone in this mat
ter for the reason that her interests are not
and cannot be identical with those of the
country.
This is the same paper which but few
days ago said that all statements inferring
that San Francisco had not common in
terest with the interior were contempt
ible and pitiable and variously wrong.
This same metropolitan journal, whose
vision, even from the top of its tower of
silence. does not reach beyond the foot of
Market street, proceeds to say:
The interior knows this perfectly we'll One
can scarcely pick up an interior paper with
out having it thrust upon his attention by the
country itself Our interests are unlike, and
no amount of special pleading or artificially-
created expressions of sympathy and atfec-
ton can alter the fact.
AACAO - "a AiOSAOPO4AIbl .Su1udl u0C4dI-
ing the existence of an antagonism of
interest between city and its support
ing country. The underlying fact is that
before this Traffic Association had pro-
ceeded very far it was discovered that
the merchants of San Francisco were
simply asking a reduction of rates, the
benefit of which they did not intend to
give to their customers; that the mer-
chants Of San Francisco were asking that
high rate should be placed on all goods
transported to the interior in order that
the position of San Francisco as a dis
tributing center might be maintained.
The merchants of San Francisco found
that there was no unity of interest be-
tween themselves and the shippers of
cheap California products. The mer-
chants of San Francisco expected the
railroads to discriminate in their favor.
They therefore found that this discrim-
ination could not be maintained if the
interior had an equal voice in the man
agement of the Traffic Association.
Hence the Chronicle, which aspires to be
the organ of this Little Peddling policy,
is found declaring that to make a joint
enterprise of the association and to in
clude the interior is impracticable; that
"our interests are unlike and that no
special pleading can alter the fact"
The Chronicle proceeds to say that one
of the leading merchants of San Fran
cisco, man named Castle, puts the
matter into a nutshell. 1t says: "He
points out that the st. Louis Freight
Bureau is not Missouri concern; that
the Chicago organization is not an Illi-
nois traffic association, or the st. Paul
Bureau Minnesota freight association"
Itaffords US exquisite pleasure to assure
our San Francisco contemporaries, none
of whom have the slightest capacity for
vision beyond Goat Island to the east and
the Cliff House to the west, that the
through points of Los Angeles, San
Diego, San Jose, Stockton, Marysville
and Sacramento, and Portland and Seat
tie, ETC., will be maintained Neither the
testimony of leading merchants, the
formation of traffic associations, nor the
efforts of journals published at San
Francisco will avail to change this con-
dition of things.
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