One small piece of evidence to show that competition between rival towns or producing districts was the reason for some of the most bitter attacks upon the railroad, may be found in the complaint of the anti-monopolists of Tulare County in 1885 that their fruits, which ought to have found a market in the southern parts of the state and in Arizona, were subjected to higher freight rates than were the fruits of Sacramento and of San José, points more than 200 miles to the north.[389]
A few years earlier the merchants of Stockton insisted that the rates out of Stockton were extortionate as compared with the rates out of San Francisco. The distance from Lathrop to Stockton was said to be 10 miles, and the railroad rate per ton on wheat was $1.20, or 12 cents per mile. The distance from Lathrop to San Francisco was 82 miles, or more than eight times the distance to Stockton, but the price per ton for wheat was only $2.50, or about one quarter the price per ton per mile in the first instance. The price per ton from Lodi to Stockton was $1.40, and to San Francisco $2.50; but whereas the last-named sum was less than twice the former, the distance from Lodi to San Francisco was eight times as great as the distance to Stockton.[390]
In addition to their contention that mileage rates on shipments into Stockton compared unfavorably with rates on shipments into San Francisco, Stockton residents made the general charge that rates up the San Joaquin Valley were generally less than the rates down the valley. The rate from Stockton to Merced was said to be $6.80 per ton, but the rate from Merced to Stockton was $3.40. Stockton objected to forcing of the San Joaquin Valley to make San Francisco its market.[391]
Interstate Commerce Decision
Complaints similar to those voiced by Stockton were registered by the people of Los Angeles. In the eyes of inhabitants of that city, the rates on northbound freight from Los Angeles consigned to the San Joaquin Valley were relatively higher than the rates from San Francisco south into that same valley. Yet, dissatisfied as Los Angeles was with the relation which her rates bore to those out of San Francisco, it seemed to other cities in the south that her position was on the whole more favorable than was that of her neighbors. In 1889 a dealer in the city of San Bernardino protested against being forced to pay a higher rate from eastern points than was charged the city of Los Angeles. He showed that the rate on agricultural implements from the Missouri River to San Bernardino was $1.27 per hundred pounds while to Los Angeles it was $1.07. On stoves the rates were $1.19 and 99 cents, respectively, and on school furniture $1.55 and $1.35. This preference was alleged to be discriminative and illegal.[392]
In a decision approving the discrimination against San Bernardino, the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1890 remarked that originally southern California had been served from San Francisco direct; and that San Francisco jobbers had covered its territory. When the railroads reached Los Angeles they found it to their advantage to grant it low rates, not so much because it lay near the Pacific Ocean as because the interests of the Southern Pacific and especially of the Santa Fé demanded that some point in southern California should be given such a rate that merchandise from the East could be brought there all-rail and from that point be distributed. The fact that water competition was not the only influence which determined the Los Angeles rate from the eastern states was indeed shown later by the fact that the port of Los Angeles, San Pedro, did not receive a terminal rate until 1910, although Los Angeles itself had been given terminal privileges at least twenty years before.[393]
Stockton, Los Angeles, and San Bernardino thus illustrate in their conflicting claims the constant effort of cities in California to extend the area over which they might distribute goods. Among other instances of dispute between California cities may be mentioned the demand of Santa Barbara in 1907 to be made a Pacific Coast terminal,[394] and the angry contentions of Santa Clara, San José, Marysville, Santa Rosa, and Fresno in 1914 over the question of relative railroad rates from eastern points.[395] The characteristics of the system of transcontinental rates which were involved in these complaints will be discussed in the following chapter.