competition with each other in common markets, that has had much to do with increasing the severity of this competition and with causing the creation of trust combinations for dividing and controlling markets. There was a time

when the individual manufacturer had a practical monopoly of the market within a certain distance from his mill, or at least had no other competitors than those of his own locality. The village cobbler, the local tailor, or the weaver, in an English country town, ran but small risk of competition from London or from the other great towns, because of the time required to reach them and the cost and delay of shipping goods.

The change which has brought markets nearer together has come about by degrees. The charges for railway carriage have been reduced, from decade to decade, with the improvement in railway construction, through economy in the use of fuel, derived from improvement in machinery, and through the gradual cheapening of most of the materials of construction.

A

recent article in the London Contemporary Review estimated the combined carrying power of ships and railroads at 26,440,000 tons in 1860, and 83,340,000 tons in 1892. It was calculated that in the year 1850 the cost of land carriage for goods in Europe was about $10 a ton, for one hundred kilometres (sixty-two miles), amounting to about sixteen cents. a mile. The reduction in these charges in recent years was set forth in a forcible manner by Professor Henry T. Newcomb, in a report to the Department of Agriculture in 1898, in which he showed that the average revenue from freight, per ton per mile, on the railways of the United States, fell from 1.613 cents in 1873 to 0.806 cent in 1896,-a fall of one-half the original rate within less than a generation. It has since fallen to 0.76 cent.

These reductions in the cost of transportation have resulted in a greatly increased volume of commerce. The freight traffic on the railways of the world is estimated to have trebled between 1870 and 1892, rising from 562,000,000 tons in the

former year to 1,746,000,000 tons in the latter year. Europe absorbed 902,000,000 tons of the later traffic, the United States 749,000,000 tons, and other countries 95,000,000 tons. The estimated railway equipment of the world in 1896 was about 445,000 miles (715,000 kilometres), representing a cost of nearly thirty-three thousand millions of dollars (170,000,000,000 francs).' How recent has been this railway development is indicated by the fact that more than half of the present railway mileage of the United States has been constructed since 1880. The mileage of 1870 was only 40, 160, which rose in 1880 to 87,724 miles. The next ten years brought up the construction to 163,597 miles, since when construction has been less rapid, because the great centres of trade and production had been connected with each other and equipped with railway construction. The mileage of 1900 was about 190,000 and that of 1902 about 203,000. In France the length of rail

1 Dictionnaire du Commerce, de l'Industrie et de la Banque, i., p. 829.

ways in operation, exclusive of private lines and tramways, rose from 17,221 kilometres in 1872 to 38,166 kilometres in 1900. In the German Empire, where there were 11,729 miles in 1870, there were 30,562 miles in 1900. In Russia, within the short period from 1887 to 1900 the mileage of the State railways alone, not including the private lines, rose from 2928 to 20,346 miles. Italy increased her mileage from 3825 miles in 1870 to 9821 miles in 1899.

In the whole of Europe, according to the editor of l'Économiste Européen, the aggregate railway equipment in operation increased from 134,591 kilometres, on January 1, 1875, to 269,743 kilometres (165,000 miles), on December 31, 1898. A still further increase is computed by M. Leroy-Beaulieu to 296,051 kilometres (183,000 miles) at the close of 1902. The latest figures of railway construction outside Europe and the United States indicate a total of about 93,000 miles, where in 1850 scarcely a mile of road existed, and where even in 1870 there were less

than 12,000 miles. In Egypt, where railways were unknown in the middle of the century, the screech of the locomotive may now be heard along 1389 miles of line. In the Argentine Republic, where 58 miles of road existed in 1860, there were 10,412 in 1900. In Japan, which was practically without railways twenty years ago, there are now 3699 miles of line; and in Mexico, which had 215 miles in 1870, 9800 miles of road link the interior with the seacoast and the American frontier.

It is not surprising that by this new equipment with the means of transportation the world, from being separated into isolated local markets has become a single great market, in which the staple products of industry compete with each other upon nearly equal terms, whether originating in the mills of England, the pioneer of manufactures, in the shops and homes of France and Germany, in the new factories of the United States, with their modern machinery, or in the still younger establishments of China and Japan. It was estimated in