The record-union., 1893-04-28
BEDROCK FACTS.
San Francisco Wants Pioneer Condi-
tions Restored.
She VIII Not be Content Unless the
Interior Pays Tribute
to Her.
[From the stockton Daily Man. |

-D'~SSSS'''
last evening that Mr.. Huntington's rail-
road is determined to ruin California
with cheap overland rates. "Mr. Hunt
ington," it says, lis preparing to resist
to the death this city's effort to recover its
lost commercial freedom" And again:
HE proposes to give low rates where he
cannot help himself, not to develop our
commerce, but to restore the power of his
monopoly"
In contemporaneous issue of the Re
port, which is also an organ of the San
Francisco Traffic Association, there is
this on the same subject:
''The people of the interior have a fine
object lesson in the Navigation Company.
Is 8 AS freight is carried much
cheaper than before, the interior cities
and towns are getting the benefit OF a
competition created by the city mer-
chants"
The Report has for more than a year
been advocating competing transconti-
mental railroad as the only solution of the
problem of greater prosperity for Cali
fornla. A competing road would bring
down charges, or at least that is the only
way in which it could benefit the State.
The Bulletin has also latterly been advo-
eating the same thing. Now, however,
that the result has been brought about in
another way, or by competing steam
ship line, one OF these papers sees disas-
ter ahead as consequence of the reduc-
ton in charges which competition was
advocated TO bring about and the other
may be expected to follow with like
opinion in few days.
To us of the interior, who are not so
greatly concerned for the welfare of San
tr1nciScn AGAINST the rQGt Of tho Stata
all this seems peculiar. There is an OBJ
ject lesson for US, we are told, in the
restoration of the Old time supremacy of
that city as a distributing point through
the agency of the new steamship line.
There is, indeed, an object lesson in it,
but it teaches exactly the reverse of what
the Report would have US believe. 1t re-
calls the old days, before the transconti-
mental railroads were built, when San
Francisco was the veritable emporium OF
the whole coast. No place in the interior
could obtain as much as a miners wheel
barrow without going to "The Bay' for
it. San Francisco held the key to the
situation then and controlled the COM
merce Of the State.
But things are different now. The rail-
roads have enabled the interior to import
directly, without going to San Francisco.
The change was natural and inevitable.
| Commerce that reached US by water
ISdCHeQ odu HTSl.
that now finds its way hither by rail
| touches the interior points for which it is
designed before it gets to San Francisco.
At first the railroads billed everything
through to the old terminus, and San
Francisco was satisfied. The interior had
to go there for everything, the same as
under the older of things. The interior
| objected, however, to paying an unneces-
sary tribute to a city that had lost its
right to control as natural result of the
new development, until finally Stockton
and some other interior towns were made
terminal points. This transferred certain
trade from the metropolis to them, and
also shifted the scene ofcomplaint. Abol-
ish the interior terminals and compel all
the through traffic to end in San Fran
cisco and all the distribution to originate
there and the Traffic Association would
go out of business in day. The pioneer
conditions would be completely restored,
with the exception of such commerce as
has been diverted from San Francisco to
the north and the south and which can
not be recovered any more than you can
change the law of gravity.
These are bedrock facts which the Bulle-
tin and the Report are fully cogniZant OF
but which they studiously ignore. There
is between the interior and San Fran
cisco an irreconcilable conflict in the
matter OF the present effort of the Traffic
Association to recover lost trade to that
city. All of it that could by any possi-
bility be recovered (for it is not pretended
that the slightest impression could be
made upon Los Angeles or the Puget
Sound region) has gone to the interior.
Very naturally the interior is quite con-
tent with the change. There are no traffic
associations in this part of the State.
From this view of the situation it is
easy enough to see why the Bulletin and
the Report condemn a cut in overland
rates while applauding a like cut in rates
by water. Traffic by ocean has its nat
ural terminus at San Francisco, while
traffic by rail has its natural terminus at
the inland points nearest the place of last
sale, or the place of consumption. That
is why the bulletin pretends to think the
new steamship company is doing great
thing for San francisco in bringing down
freight rates from the East, but that Mr..
Huntington is bent upon running not
only that city, but the whole State, by
precisely similar reduction. 1t is of
course silly nonsense to say that great
railroad is trying to destroy the COM
merce upon which it feeds. The BuLLe-
TINS assertion of what Mr.. Huntington's
intentions are in this matter are not bit
more ridiculous than like declaration
by the Mail would be that our own navi-
CATION companies were pursuing policy
designed to destroy the commerce of
Stockton. In the event that they should
succeed. what would they do with their
boats And in case MIR. Huntington is
successful in what the Bulletin states is
his present intention, what will he do
with his