IN THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS. t) 
kind. It is manifestly impossible for roads running across the 
country a distance of fifteen or more miles to charge a single 
rate, and as these roads take on and drop off passengers at 
any point along the lines, there would result a great diversity 
in rates of fare if these were fixed purely by the distance 
travelled, and an attempt to provide for such rates would 
inevitably lead to a constant wrangle between passengers and 
conductors as to the distance travelled. 
On such roads the rates of fare have been gradually 
arranged on what may be called the zone system, and it is now 
the common practice to collect a single fare each time a car 
passes into a new zone. For example, if the fare between 
two points fifteen miles apart is twenty-five cents, fares will be 
collected by the conductor five different times, five cents being 
collected in each zone. It is of course impossible to fix 
absolutely the boundaries of these zones so that a passenger 
who gets on a car within one hundred yards of a boundary 
line shall be required to pay two fares within a distance of one 
hundred yards, but it has worked in practice with compara- 
tively little friction. The separation of these zones by the 
boundary lines of the different towns passed through has been 
much employed, although this has the disadvantage of making 
zones of unequal size, but at present the tendency is towards 
uniformity in the distance for which one five cent fare will 
carry a passenger. 
The five cent fare, which with few exceptions, and then only 
on special cars or to special classes, is in universal use 
throughout Massachusetts, represents of course the average 
expense of transporting each passenger, plus the profit made 
by the company, and the passenger who travels, as many do 
in a city, only a few blocks, pays excessively for his transpor- 
tation, while the passenger who may be carried to the extreme 
limits of the system is carried at a loss to the company. This 
plan is not perfectly equitable, but as the person who travels 
at an excessive cost to himself is in nearly every case one 
who desires something special, who wishes to be carried 
LLC