TRANSPORTATION 93 



No technical and economic fact has been more instrumental in repre- 

 senting the state as the living element of each economic organization 

 than the transportation of our days, which could not exist without 

 being supported by the state, and which, on the other hand, would 

 turn out to be, not a creative, but a destructive force in economics 

 without being regulated by the state. The necessity of a principle 

 of common economics as supplemental to one of purely private eco- 

 nomics has been illustrated in transportation by the influences of the 

 corporations with common economics, viz., state and community. 

 Finally, I shall point to the fact that the consideration of com- 

 mercial organization and commercial politics is no longer possible 

 without simultaneous consideration of transportation. The estab- 

 lishment of roads for universal commerce as the result of the develop- 

 ment of transportation, especially the technical and systematical 

 improvements of navigation, the removal of the economic effects of 

 natural obstacles by tariff politics, the separation of the organiza- 

 tion of transportation with the organization of commerce, and, in 

 connection with it, the more perfect organization of expedition, have 

 caused most important changes of the world's trade as well as of 

 the interior commercial organization. I mention only the facili- 

 tated avoiding of staple places and the increase of direct communi- 

 cation between producers and their customers, which, for instance, 

 brought about the independency of the continental ports from Eng- 

 land, the destruction of the basis of existence of the smaller trades- 

 men in the interior of the countries, the advancement of corporative 

 commercial organization with its own production. An apparent 

 contradiction between the exterior commercial politics and the facts 

 of communication is thus solved. " Railways, and commercial 

 blockade! The outlay of immense capital for the furtherance of 

 trade, and tariff laws for the obstruction of trade! ' Thus Prince- 

 Smith has exclaimed, to call attention to the economic politics of 

 the present time. But, in fact, it was the centralizing force of the 

 means of communication which had aroused powerfully the political 

 and economic common spirit; it contributed, as a mighty factor, to 

 the fact that the idea of the national protective tariff rooted deeper 

 in the foreign commercial politics and that it was demanded that 

 the state should similarly influence the international competition, 

 as in the tariff politic in the interior. Presumably the time is not 

 long when uniform tariff politic of transportation for international 

 commerce will be the topic of public discussion, as it indubitably 

 has been used already with success in several cases. 1 The influence 

 of the institutions of transportation upon the cultural life of the 

 nations, independently from their material and political basis, 



1 Cf. Seidler und Freud, Die Eisenbahntarife. Ihre Beziehungen zur Handeh- 

 politik, 1904. 



