showing the rapidity of industrial and economic development during the closing generation of the nineteenth century, are an index of the great accumulation of capital which has resulted from the increased efficiency of labor which machinery and industrial combination has made possible. The masses of the people live much better as a result of their increased productive power than was the case at the beginning of the nineteenth century, or even at the beginning of the last generation of that century.

So far as they consume more than they formerly did, they do not contribute so rapidly to the accumulation of capital as if they employed their increased productive power entirely in savings. As production, however, must necessarily be for consumption in some form, the increased productive power of the masses, so far as it had been applied to direct consumption, has caused a demand for many classes of goods which has justified the creation of new enterprises and their equipment with the most efficient modern machinery.

Every such enterprise, by increasing the productive power of labor and therefore the remuneration of the aggregate labor of the world, has increased the capacity for saving. So far as this capacity has been exercised, there has been brought into the money market a great fund of saved capital seeking investment in safe dividend-paying securities. It is the almost bewildering rapidity with which this fund has increased, as already pointed out, which has taxed the resources of honest financiers to find employment for it and has led the less scrupulous or more venturesome to devise projects of doubtful utility for meeting the demand for profitable investment.

V

PUTTING CHINA ON THE GOLD STANDARD

WESTERN Civilization has seemed, during the last few years, to be sighing with more restlessness than Alexander for new worlds to conquer for its inventive genius and its financial and economic organization. Such conquests, happily, where they do not raise the question of territorial acquisition, benefit alike those who make them and the countries where they are made. Railway construction within the past decade has traversed the steppes of Siberia, bringing the West within two weeks' journey of the extreme Orient; has connected Europe with Central Asia and the Caspian Sea, and has carried the shriek of the locomotive, through the cities where Paul preached, to the capitals of the ancient civilizations of Nebuchadnezzar and Xerxes. A railway A railway is being com

pleted from "Cairo to the Cape," which is sending offshoots through the heart of Africa and spreading the arts of civilization through a country which, a generation ago, could hardly be traversed by the most hardy explorers under armed escort.

Familiar as are the arguments for the benefits derived from railways, their real influence as agents alike of civilization and centralized power is often overlooked. They have made possible political unions which would otherwise be extremely difficult. Many were found who predicted that the American Union would fall to pieces of its own weight when it extended to Oregon, and the maintenance of Russian power in Asia would hardly be possible without her network of ways of steel. The recent history of Mexico is another case in point. Insurrections against the central authority, which once spread for weeks before they were even known at the capital, can now be suppressed by the use of the telegraph and the railway almost before they have taken form. The railway system in China is yet in its infancy,

but the country promises soon to be gridironed with bands of steel, which will open a new chapter in her economic life. In addition to the four roads already in operation to the extent of nearly a thousand miles, not less than five great lines are in process of construction, which will connect the chief cities of the interior and the coast. Concessions for half a dozen others have been granted, the plans for which are being rapidly perfected.

With the unification of national economic life, which will come to China with the extension of railways, must inevitably come also many other elements of western civilization. Among these will be the use of money and the adoption of modern methods of credit. Wherever a railway is in process of construction, coined money will be required for buying the products of the country and paying wages. Whereever a railway is in operation, money will be the only practicable medium for paying freights. Hence railway extension will open new fields for the use of money and introduce masses of the Chinese