connecting lines. Through tickets,
joint fares and rates, through bills of lading, the interchange of
cars between connecting roads, and the settlement of joint accounts
led to the establishment of co-operative freight lines, car-service
associations, claim associations, and various other general and local
organisations for the promotion of the joint transportation business.

The other cause of co-operation among the railways was the necessity
of regulating competition. This cause first became potent after the
process of consolidation had brought about the formation of numerous
large railway systems, and had inaugurated the violent competition
which led to discriminations in transportation charges, rate wars, and
the other evils which have combined to produce "the railway question."
The competitive struggles of rival railway systems began to be violent
shortly after 1867, and soon led to the formation of railway traffic
associations, with enlarged powers. The classification of freight, the
determination of rates on competitive traffic, and the apportionment
of that traffic, or of the earnings from it, among the competitors
became functions of the associations.

THE WORK OF ALBERT FINK

The man who did more than any other person to develop traffic
associations and to promote the co-operation of competing railroads
was the late Albert Fink. It was his master mind that organised and
put into successful operation in 1876 the Southern Railway and
Steamship Association. The following year Albert Fink succeeded in
organising the great trunk lines connecting the North Atlantic
seaboard and the States north of the Ohio River. Though smaller
traffic associations similar to these two organisations had been
previously established where but few obstacles had to be overcome, it
was Fink who first organised traffic associations including all the
competing railroads serving large sections of the country.

In discussing the work of traffic associations, which are to-day
concerns of really enormous magnitude, railway pooling and the
classification of freight especially demand consideration.

RAILROAD POOLING

Railroad pools are agreements entered into by competing carriers, by
which the railroads provide for the division with each other of their
competitive traffic, or of the earnings from that traffic in
accordance with stipulated ratios. Thus there are traffic pools and
money pools. During the decade preceding 1887, the year whe