1. Different modes of transport are more or less economical relatively to the other industrial conditions. Not only new routes but new agents of travel change the scale of values. In early societies, undeveloped industrially, first men, then domestic animals, were used as beasts of burden. The first vehicles are technically simple in design and construction; on land are used drags, sleds, carts; on waterways are used rafts, canoes, barges, and boats. Primitive means of transportation had to be inexpensive, for poverty and the uncertainty of early society forbade the tying up of large resources in them. Technical efficiency of means of transportation may be contrasted with economic efficiency. Technical goodness is absolute, and is measured in speed and weight of cargo; economic efficiency is relative, and varies with the money cost and money value of the services. A turnpike is more efficient than a mud road, yet in some districts it is bad economy to build it. A railroad is more efficient than a cart, yet in some places even pack-horses are more economical. To be economical, the expenditure needed to supply the efficient agent must be warranted by the volume and value of traffic.

Technical vs economic efficiency of transportation.

Economic advantages of natural waterways.

2. The most economical means of transportation before the railroad were the waterways, natural and artificial. Some natural waterways still afford the most economical means of transportation between favorably situated ports. Coal is shipped most cheaply in sailing vessels from Wales around Cape Horn to ports along the western coasts of America. A part of California's regular fuel-supply is obtained in this way. Coal has been shipped from Pennsylvania to Europe, and in the anthracite coal-strike in 1902, some was shipped from England to America. Invention has reduced the cost of construction and operation of vessels and has increased their safety and speed, thus multiplying the efficiency of the natural waterways. The large cities in America are situated on waterways, usually where there is a break in transportation requiring reshipment, as, for example, at New York, San Francisco, Buffalo, New Orleans, Cincinnati, Chicago, Minneapolis, and St. Paul. Likewise many of the small cities and villages, serving as local trading centers, owe their existence to similar though less powerful influences.

Merits and defects of canals.

Canals are begun as connecting links in a system of natural waterways to extend the advantages of cheap transportation. The Erie Canal not only serves the three hundred miles of territory along its banks, but it opened to commerce all the lands tributary to the Great Lakes. The great advantage of canals is cheapness of operation due to the simplicity of the machinery needed and to the great loads that can be moved with small power. A cent a ton-mile is a paying rate on a canal. For heavy, slow-moving freight, the railroads can hardly rival the canals at their best. As canals, however, can be built only along a level country and where the water supply is at a high level, their construction is limited to a small portion of the country. The law of extensive diminishing returns applies strongly to the construction of canals. The first canals are easily constructed and economically operated, but it is only with greater cost and difficulty that the system can be successively extended. In temperate climates their use is limited by ice to a part of the year, and the summer's drought sometimes limits it still further. At its best, therefore, the small land-locked canal is fitted only to be a supplementary agent in the system of transportation wherever industry demands high speed and great regularity. Far different is the case of the oceanic canal in a tropical climate.

3. The railroad is rapidly surpassing in importance every other agency of transportation. Even in respect to cheapness, the unique virtue of waterways in favored localities, the railroad has been making rapid gains. Improvements in roadbed, rails, cars, engines, and other equipment are reducing greatly the cost of conducting traffic on the main lines of roads. The adaptability of the railroad excels that of any other agent of transportation; it can go over mountains or tunnel through them. In certainty its superiority is marked; floods and snows may delay it for a day, but there is no seasonal stoppage of traffic. In speed, the railroad so far excels that the canal can survive only by dividing the traffic, taking the lower grades of freight, and leaving to the railroad the passenger traffic and fast freight.

Superior advantages of railroads.

Because of these qualities, the extension of the railroads in the last fifty years has been so rapid that it has not given time for a gradual adaptation of industry. It has worked in many places revolutionary changes. The building of railroads in the Mississippi valley in the seventies lowered the value of Eastern farms, ruined many English farmers, and depressed the peasantry in all western Europe. With the prices that resulted when the fertile lands of the Western prairies were opened to the world's markets, the stony and worked-out lands of the older districts could not compete. Great regions are still to be opened in this manner in Russia, Siberia, Africa, and South America. While one can only speculate upon the effects this development will have, the changes promise to be less sudden and tremendous than those of the last twenty years. Many minor changes, of no less moment in limited districts, result from the building of railroads. Local trading-centers decrease in importance. Villages and towns, hoping to be enriched by the railroads, see trade going to the cities. Commerce becomes centralized. Enormous increase of value at a few points is offset by losses in other localities.

Results of the rapid growth of railroads.

Monopoly power of railroads.