The record-union., 1892-06-09
THE WHOLE CASE STATED.

The Traffic Association of San Fran
cisco is nervously solicituous in its ex-
preston of purpose, to impress upon the
people of the interior the declaration that
its aim is to benefit the whole State. But
as a matter of fact, fact of which it can
not make concealment, the Traffic Asso-
citation demands-and the whole under
tone of its declaration discloses 1.-THE
recognition of the claim of San Francisco
TO be the sole distributing center of all
imports. This is the very keynote of its
existence.
The Traffic Association is the instru-
ment of the metropolitan importers of
supplies, not of the exporters of our
products. 1t was formed in the interest
of San Francisco, to maintain the su-
premacy of that city as distributing
center. The metropolitan merchant is
the agent of the Eastern manufacturer,
who, in turn, is the commercial enemy of
incipient manufactures in California.
So true is this that the RECoRD-U UNION
has not hesitated to say that what would
most conserve home manufacturing in
terests would be high rate on incoming
manufactures and low rate on outgoing
products. But the Traffic Association is
seeking for the mercantile class of San
Francisco cheaper freights, not in the in
terest of the customer or consumer, butin
the interest of widening the margin of
profit between the cost of the goods
which necessarily includes the freight
and the price at which the goods can be
sold in the market. There is not then, and
cannot be, any community of interest
between the purpose of the Traffic Asso-
citation and the purpose of the producer of
California products, precisely as there
can be no community of interest between
the latter and the importer of merchandise
TO be used here.
The producers of this State will never
consent to put their case into the hands
of the Traffic Association, because they
have sense enough to understand that the
merchant-agent of Eastern manufactures
must take care of his own and his princi-
pals interest.
When San Francisco was the focal CEN
ter of all converging and diverging lines
of commerce into and out of the Pacific
territory, it did enjoy monopoly of dis
tribution, monopolistic privilege-not
aright-that could not even be disputed
by the interior, since it was at its mercy.
But when the Golden Gate ceased to be
the entrepot of the entire commerce,
through which ali import and all export
had TO pass, there were erected new condi-
tions that invested the interior with a
right it had not heretofore enioyed-that
is to say, the right to buy in any market.
TO import direct and export independent
of the middlemen of the metropolis.
As we have heretofore shown, there is
now outside of San Francisco, population
at distributive points in the aggregate
equal to that of that city. 1t is under
standable why. under these altered con-
OAtAoLS, san iauClSCO comp pldlnS WD6n II
approaches these interior and rival dis
tributing centers, that it cannot sell in
competition with their merchants and the
agents of the Eastern establishments it
there meets. 1t is understandable, there
fore, why San Francisco should clamor
for condition similar to the earlier
period, that viii enable that city to re-
sumo the position it occupied when it was
the focal center of all trade.
The trade of the State-which includes
all its production and all its consumption
supports now, as we have said, popu-
lation in trade centers outside of San
Francisco equal, in aggregate, to the pop
ulation of the metropolis. Deprive these
outside distributing centers of half their
trade, and the shrinkage of supported
population will be one-half This rule
has operated in San Francisco, and the
result proves the rule; hence it is that
there is to-day struggle for supremacy
on the part of the metropolis with the
whole region lying west Of the Rocky
Mountains. In that struggle San Fran
cisco sees only, or refuses TO see other
than the instrument of this commercial
change, namely, the railway system,