76 TRANSPORTATION 



institutions cannot do justice. " For the ways of transportation and 

 communication are not only the base of the material and ideal com- 

 munication, but they serve also the transportation of persons, of 

 material, and ideal articles for all other purposes; they are a con- 

 stant fundamental element for the social, scientific, juristic, esthetic, 

 pedagogic, and political-strategic conditions of life." * After having 

 placed, in his social system of " human economics," 2 the economic 

 systems of transportation in opposition to those of original produc- 

 tion, of the trade and commerce, as equivalent, he was the first to 

 investigate, in his great work, these further effects of transportation 

 from the point of view of their importance for society as unity. 

 Sax has devoted to transportation the first comprehensive mono- 

 graph. In his introduction he declares that national economy 

 neglects this point. While the qualities of other means of trans- 

 portation and their influence upon the formation of economics are 

 discussed in each systematic representation of the economic funda- 

 mental doctrines, and have even found, so to say, their distinct 

 place in these doctrines, the same is not the case with regard to the 

 means of communication. One is satisfied usually with a few rather 

 superficial remarks which, besides, are inserted occasionally and dis- 

 persedly, instead of being discussed " ex professo," connectedly. 



The work of Sax is a very complete analysis of the institutions of 

 transportation from the point of view of technical organization and 

 of economy. He has not answered the question which place shall be 

 assigned to transportation in the system of national economy, how it is 

 to be used for the theory of national economy. Thus it has remained 

 to this very day. Only Thuenen makes an exception; in his " iso- 

 lated state " (1826), he discussed the importance of the distances and 

 of transportation for the selection of the places of agricultural pro- 

 ductions. Thus he has furnished the first contribution to a theoretical 

 valuation of space. Besides him we must name Diihring. He is 

 the only one who places transportation in the system of national 

 economy in a position determining the whole economy. He con- 

 siders the importance of transportation equivalent to that of the 

 organization of human forces, to the size of population, and to the 

 endowment of a country with natural resources; all these are general 

 conditions of -increased productivity. Diihring stands under the 

 influence of the American Carey who, without treating transportation 

 itself, sees the determining principle for the progress or regress of 

 the national organization of production in the dependency of the 

 production upon the distance from the market and who strives 



1 Ban und Leben des sozialen Korpers, 1. Band, Allgemeiner Teil, 1875, S. 328; 

 3. Band, 1. Halfte, die Gesellschaft in Zcit und Raum, S. 113. 



2 Gesellschaft System der menschlichen Wirtschaft: namentlich in der 3. Aufl. 

 1873. 



