Elasticity and quick adaptation to the exigencies of business are peculiarities of American railway operation. Our railway managers have always been most progressive in seeking, in and out of season, to develop new territory and build up traffic. The strongest contrast between Europe and the United States lies in this fact. European railways more often take business as they find it. Our railways _make_ it. Much of this business is made possible only by special rates adapted to the case in hand. These need not be secret or discriminating, as has already been observed. For although offered with reference to particular cases, they may be open to all comers. The economic justification lies in the fact that the railway can afford to make a low rate, leaving a bare margin of profit above the _extra_ cost of adding this traffic to that which is already in motion. Such rates cannot exceed a definite figure based upon what the traffic will bear. A higher rate than this would kill the business. Something is contributed toward fixed charges by the new traffic, so far as the railway is concerned; and at the same time the shipper on his part is enabled to enlarge his operations. Yet such a scale of rates if applied to the whole traffic of the railway might be ruinous in the extreme. The domestic shipper of wheat may conceivably be helped, rather than injured, by a special rate on grain for Liverpool without which the railway would lose the business entirely. To transport California fruit for a mere fraction of the rate per ton mile which is laid upon other traffic may actually enable those other goods to be carried more cheaply than before. Of course, if the other traffic be directly competitive, as for instance in this case, oranges from Florida, that is an entirely different matter. Railway representatives rightfully insist upon these special rates to develop new business as a boon to the commercial world. They contrast them with the hard and fast schedules of European railways. They allege that such elasticity loosens the joints of competition, "keeps everyone in business," equalizes prices over large areas, and is in fact the life of trade. One of the stock objections to railway regulation is that it may lessen this elasticity, "substitute mile posts for brains," and produce stagnation in place of activity.