TRANSPORTATION 81 



the craft bequeathed by an empiric master to his apprentice into 

 the province of scientific research and application of technology. 

 Sombart has correctly pointed to this feature as decisive and char- 

 acteristic for the machinal equipment of the presence. The admir- 

 able development of the technical sciences in their application to 

 transportation owes very much to natural philosophy, but very 

 little to the social sciences, whose object is given by the regulated 

 association of men. Also here it is evident that the connection of 

 the sciences which occupy themselves with transportation is formed 

 not by a mutual dependency in the manner of investigation and 

 method, but by the homogeneity of the object. But, on the other 

 hand, all changes which one science causes in the object produce an 

 effect in all other sciences. The attainments of scientific technology 

 create new forms of communication and new relations in the exchange 

 of wares as well as in the intellectual connection of mankind, which 

 must be taken into consideration by the social sciences. And these 

 show to technology the direction in which it must master the natural 

 forces in order to respond to the demands of society. Therefore, the 

 technical sciences are always related to the social conditions. Frei- 

 herr von Weber has ingeniously shown the national character of the 

 railroad systems in different states and explained it from their 

 dependency upon the natural, economic, political conditions of the 

 life of the different nations. This dependency is also felt by every 

 technologist at the execution of his tasks; it is the reason for which 

 also the technical sciences make their problems depend upon the 

 economic conditions and the juristic conditions of the state. As to 

 the economic consideration of the technical problems, we owe to the 

 technologists very valuable incentives to transportation, of which 

 political economy makes use. 



So the question of the feasibility of constructing a railroad has 

 been treated until now in a scientific way only by the technologists. 

 They have developed a theory of " commercial tracing " besides 

 the theory of technical tracing, and searched after formulae which 

 shall enable political economy to decide the arrangement of street 

 systems and of railroads, and the kind of their construction. The 

 commercial tracing must establish the capacity of the different 

 technically possible lines of a system of railroads or of streets, and 

 must select the most favorable line. Instead of the old method 

 followed at the construction of railroads and based upon the esti- 

 mation of the traffic on the highways, the French engineer Michel 

 was the first to employ a more perfect and, at the same time, more 

 simple method. In his investigations, which he extended to a large 

 part of the French railroads, he started from the assumption that 

 the transportation must be closely connected with the number of 

 inhabitants of a certain region, and he found that the transportation 



