341. Commercial importance of the subjects of the chapter.—“Of all inventions, the alphabet and the printing-press alone excepted, those inventions which abridge distance have done most for the civilization of our species.” Macaulay’s celebrated sentence applies to civilization in general. With regard to the material civilization depending upon commerce, certainly no factor has been of greater importance than improvement in the means of transportation and communication. An improvement in these means has been effected during the past century, without a parallel in the world’s history; and a description of the changes deserves the most careful attention of the student in the short space which can be allowed the subject.

342. Statistical survey of development.—For a convenient means of reference I introduce, in this place, a statistical table (on opposite page) showing the development of the most important modern instruments of transportation and communication.

343. Improvement in the condition of roads.—Aside from the stretches of canal which had been brought into operation, the universal means of inland transportation about 1800 was the road. Some reference has been made in an earlier chapter to the condition of English highways in the eighteenth century, and to the improvements which marked that period. Conditions on the Continent were worse than those in England. French roads were mere tracks in the first part of the eighteenth century, and for the most part were still hopelessly bad at its close, when the system of maintaining the roads by forced labor was abolished.

From near the close of the eighteenth century, however, we may date the beginning of a period of rapid improvement in the roads of western Europe. The turnpike system, which allowed tolls to be charged for the use of improved highways, encouraged the investment of capital in these undertakings. The teachings of Telford and Macadam, two great road-engineers who emphasized the necessity of using good materials and securing proper drainage, were generally applied. In the period from 1800 to 1850 the roads of Europe were reformed to meet the demands which commerce made upon them, before the introduction of the railroad, and were put in the excellent condition which attracts the attention of American travelers to-day. The cost of freight transportation was reduced to half or less of what it had been, and the speed of passenger service increased correspondingly. An Englishman, Porter, notes that in 1798 he occupied nineteen hours in traveling eighty miles by what was considered a “fast coach”; when he wrote, in 1838, the trip was made in eight hours.

344. Importance of roads in the present transportation system.—A word of warning may be advisable before we leave this subject to study more recent means of transportation. Not many years ago a French economist estimated that not one twentieth of the settlements of the inhabited world were within less than a day’s distance from a railroad. Even in the most advanced countries the extent of roads far exceeds that of railroads, and only in the rarest cases do products reach the consumer without having traversed a stretch of common road. The road, therefore, takes a place in our modern economy more important than, in our carelessness, we generally admit.

The unit for measuring the expense of transportation is the cost of moving a ton one mile; on a modern American railroad the average cost of a ton-mile is less than one cent. Even on the excellent roads of Europe the cost is ten cents or more; while it has been estimated that the average cost of moving farm produce to market over the common roads of the United States is twenty-five cents per ton-mile. Assuming that the average haul is twelve miles, and that three hundred million tons are carried in a year, the expense reaches the total of nine hundred million dollars, a sum greater than the operating expenses of all the railroads of the United States before 1900.

It has been proved by actual test that the same force which draws one ton on a muddy earth road will draw four tons on a hard macadam road. One of the greatest improvements in transportation is still, in large part, neglected by the American people; and intelligent energy will find in no field richer results than in the reform of our common roads. Such a reform would economize time and force, would reduce wear and tear, and would greatly better the business position of the farmer by enabling him to choose his own time for marketing his goods and making his purchases.

345. Advantage of transportation by water; canals.—The student may, perhaps, remember that in the Middle Ages the expense of transportation by road led people to choose rivers for conveying their goods, whenever this was practicable. It has been estimated that a horse which could carry on its back two or three centner (a centner is about 110 lbs.) could with equal exertion drag twenty centner on a highway, or 1,200 through dead-water. This enormous gain in efficiency, resulting from the avoidance of the slightest difference in level and from the reduction of force wasted in friction, suggested to people in early times the idea of establishing channels for water where none had previously existed, that is, of building canals. Locks, for controlling the flow and level of the water, were invented toward the end of the Middle Ages, and a considerable extent of canals had been constructed on the Continent before the Bridgewater canal, described above, was opened in England. The real era of the canal, however, was in the period which may be limited roughly by the dates 1750 and 1850.

346. Development of canals, 1750-1850.—Immense amounts of capital were invested in canals in this period of their great importance; and the European and American systems of barge canals were constructed substantially on the lines which they have since retained. A traveler could then, as now, voyage through most parts of central and eastern Europe without leaving a canal-boat. Of a country like England, endowed by nature with advantages for water communication, it could be said in 1838 that no spot south of the county of Durham was more than fifteen miles from the means of water conveyance. Factories were established along the canals, as now along the railroads. Canals relieved the highways of a large part of the growing traffic, carried many raw materials which could not have borne the expense of transportation by road, and enjoyed even a considerable share of passenger traffic.

347. Relative decline in importance of canals.—Of canals as of roads it may be said that their days of usefulness are far from past. One class, indeed, that of the great ship canals, has grown rapidly in importance in recent years. Many economists believe that even the barge canals should be maintained and improved. There is still an active canal traffic in Europe, especially in Germany, and in the last-named country a notable project for extending the canal system is under consideration. The future of canals seems to depend largely on the introduction of improved forms of motor (electricity, gasoline).

The canal has certainly yielded the place of first importance in internal transportation to the railroad. Its great merit, cheapness, has declined in importance with the reduction of railroad rates, while its drawbacks are felt more and more under the conditions of modern business. The canal is not only much slower and more uncertain than the railroad; its vital weakness is the fact that in temperate climates its usefulness is destroyed during at least a part of the winter. Since 1850 canal systems have grown slowly, if at all, and in some countries they have declined greatly. Nearly half of the English canals are now controlled by the railroads; some are closed and out of repair, and traffic is diverted from others by heavy tolls.

348. Origin of the steam railroad.—Soon after 1800 the American inventor, Evans, asserted more than once that he could manage to drive wagons on railways by steam. He expressed an idea that was by no means new, and that was then floating in the minds of many men. He said truly, however, that one step in a generation is enough, and that the monstrous leap from bad roads to steam railways could not be taken at once. Roads were improved, canals were extended, and still there was a demand for better means of transportation. Rails, first of wood and then of iron, had long been laid to enable horses to draw heavier loads at mines and quarries. George Stephenson, among others, conceived the idea of applying steam as the motive power on these railways, and distinguished himself above all predecessors by constructing, in 1814, a locomotive, Puffing Billy, which proved capable of hauling coal over a stretch of nine miles, from the mine to tide-water. Stephenson improved his original model, especially by the introduction of the steam blast to help the draft and so increase the power of the boiler; and in 1825 secured the adoption of the locomotive on the Stockton and Darlington Railway in Yorkshire. The call for this improvement had now become pressing. The port of Liverpool and the important manufacturing center, Manchester, distant only about thirty miles, were now connected by three canals, yet these were so crowded with traffic that it took sometimes a month for cotton to reach the factories from the sea. The opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830, with a locomotive, the Rocket, which made twenty-nine miles an hour, may be taken as the completion of the period of experiment, and the beginning of the railroad era.

349. Early period of the railroad.—Though steam locomotion after 1830 was a proved success, and though railroads were rapidly extended, and 1,600 miles had been brought into operation in 1835, the men of the time had still much to learn concerning their new instrument of transportation. Some men expected from it a speed of 75 or 100 miles an hour, while the State Engineer of Virginia took it as an admitted fact “that a rate of speed of more than six miles an hour would exceed the bounds set by prudence, though some of the sanguine advocates of railways extend this limit to nine miles an hour.” In certain localities the steam railroad, from the start, performed great service in freight carriage. At the Pennsylvania coal mines, for instance, it reduced the cost of hauling a ton nine miles to the river from $4.00 to $.25. Still the cost in general was high; a charge of ten cents per ton-mile was authorized in some early charters; and few people believed that the railroad could compete successfully with the canal in the transportation of ordinary freight.

350. Improvements in locomotives.—The technical improvements which have extended the usefulness of the railroad far beyond the dreams of its earlier promoters have been comparatively simple. Mere increase in size of locomotives and cars has been the greatest factor in increased efficiency. The engine which Peter Cooper constructed for experiment on the Baltimore and Ohio, about 1830, had a boiler the size of a flour barrel, weighed less than a ton, and was about the size of a modern hand-car. It was of little practical use. The development from early engines of the class of the Rocket, to those of modern American practice, is shown in the following figures:

In 1914 the average weight of the simple locomotive in the United States was 82 tons. Not only does a large locomotive put to more economical use the heat applied; the large train, also, costs far less in proportion for the services of men employed in running it.

351. Importance of steel in railroad construction.—To many readers practical devices like the air-brake, further reducing the cost and increasing the efficiency of operation, will be familiar. One factor in improvement, however, is not so apparent, and deserves special attention by reason of its commanding importance. The railroad in its modern form would be impossible if Bessemer and others had not taught the world to make steel cheaply. Iron rails, even under comparatively light loads, wore out and had to be replaced constantly. Steel rails, introduced gradually after 1860, could bear double the load on each wheel, and still outlive many iron rails. The modern rail, simple as it appears, is both in material and in proportions a great feat of engineering, “a beam whose every dimension and curve and angle are exactly suited to the tremendous work it has to do.” Steel rails and steel bridges have made possible the economy of the colossal locomotives of modern times. Steel has enabled men, instead of building 10-ton cars to carry 10 tons of cargo, to build 12-ton cars to carry 20, or 14-ton to carry 30; each improvement of this kind represents a saving in the dead weight of the train, and a consequent reduction in cost. Steel has furnished a material for the bridges over which the cars are carried, enabling a span of 500 feet to be constructed as readily as a span of 250 feet, with the iron formerly employed.

352. Development of the railroad system after 1850.—Improvements in the construction, the equipment, and the operation of railroads, for the mere suggestion of which there is scarcely space here, explain the rapid growth of the railroad system shown in the figures at the opening of the chapter. It will be noted that over 99 per cent of mileage has been constructed since 1840, and that even in 1850 the world had made but a mere beginning in railroad construction. About the middle of the century began a movement toward the consolidation of existing lines, which had formerly been operated in short stretches by independent companies. The student should note that this consolidation proceeded largely along the length of railroads, not in the modern fashion by the union of parallel and competing lines; and it is almost impossible to exaggerate the benefits that resulted, in increased efficiency of management, improved service, and lower rates. About this time (1854) the first railroad was built across the Alps; the Union and Central Pacific route was opened in 1869, beginning the era of the transcontinental roads; and investors and engineers, who found the older and more advanced sections adequately supplied with railroads, began now to build lines far out into new territory, to open up fresh land and develop new trade.

353. Importance of railroads at present.—Some attention will be paid hereafter to the decisive influence which the railroad has exercised on recent commercial development; and in the history of commerce in particular countries the thoughtful student will not fail to recognize this influence even when it is not specifically pointed out. In leaving the subject at this point, however, the student may be grateful for a summary estimate of the relative importance of railroads and other instruments of production in our modern life. A good authority has estimated that one quarter or even one third of the total invested capital of civilized nations has taken the form of railroads. It is doubtful whether the manufacturing establishments of the world are equal in value to its railroads; while the world’s whole stock of money would buy but a fraction of them. The railroads of the United States carried in 1900 a thousand million tons of freight at a cost of a thousand million dollars, and at the rate of less than three quarters of a cent per ton-mile. The student may, from these figures, estimate the service of railroads to the average individual in the country, and may rest assured that the work they do could not be accomplished by the means in use a century ago, even if the whole annual product of the country were squandered in the attempt to carry it on.

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