Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Railway Economics
Beginning approximately with the last quarter of the eighteenth century and continuing throughout that just closing there has been an almost revolutionary change in the organization and methods of productive industry. Among the most characteristic features Of this change is the increased importance Of the transportation ele ment in production. At the commencement of the period the necessary articles Of subsistence were, with few exceptions, wholly produced within the localities in which they were required for consumption, and ex changes between distant communities were practically restricted to articles of great value used only by those able to indulge in expensive luxuries. Means Of trans portation by water had improved but little, and those for transportation by land scarcely at all since the dawn of history. The movement of commodities was so costly as to be prohibitive of exchanges of ordinary food or textile products, so slow that perishable articles could traverse but the shortest distances, and accompanied by such excessive risks that at a few hundred miles from the regions of production the prices of even the most costly articles were doubled, trebled, or quadrupled. The contrast Offered at the present time is extreme.
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