interoceanic canal across the American continent.

FOR COLLATERAL REFERENCE

Photographs or illustrations of various steam and sailing craft.

An Atlantic Coast Pilot Chart--any month.

A map showing the canals of the United States.

A map showing the canals of Europe.

[Illustration: A MODERN LOCOMOTIVE--THE TWENTIETH CENTURY LIMITED AT A
SPEED EXCEEDING NINETY MILES AN HOUR]

CHAPTER VI

TRANSPORTATION--RAILWAYS AND RAILWAY ORGANIZATION; PUBLIC HIGHWAYS

In the United States and western Europe, in spite of the low cost of
water transportation, the railways have almost wholly monopolized the
transportation of commodities. This is due in part to the saving of time
in transit--for under the demands of modern business, the only economy
is economy of time--and in part to prompt delivery at the specified
time.

Into a large centre of population like New York, London, or Berlin, many
millions of pounds of perishable food-stuffs must be brought daily for
consumption. Now these food-stuffs must be delivered with promptness,
and no delay can be tolerated. A shipper having half a million pounds of
meat or a hundred thousand pounds of flour or a car-load of fruit to
deliver can take no risks; he sends it by rail, not only because it is
the quickest way, but because experience has shown it to be the most
prompt way; as a rule, it is delivered on the exact minute of schedule
time.

Cargoes of silks and teas from China and Japan might be sent all the way
to London by water, but experience has shown a more profitable way. The
consignments are sent by swift steamships to Seattle; thence by fast
express trains to New York; there they are transferred to swift liners
that take them across the Atlantic to European ports. And although this
method of shipment is enormously expensive as compared with the
all-water route, the saving of time and certainty of prompt delivery
more than offset the extra cost of delivery.

In the last half of the nineteenth century the cost of haulage in the
United States by rail decreased so materially that in a few instances
only--notably the Great Lakes and the Hudson River--do inland waters
compete with the railways.[12] This is due in part to better
organization of the railways, but mainly to the substitution of Bessemer
steel for iron rails and the great improvements in locomotives and
rolling stock.

The use of a steam-driven locomotive became possible for the first time
when Step