A BUGBEAR OF ECONOMICS 599 



likewise know that the 650 bushels are being produced, and that every- 

 body has more to eat than formerly. If pragmatism is justified any- 

 where it is in such considerations. 



A farmer recently told me that his father paid for his farm, fifty 

 years ago, by carrying the mail from Jackson to Grand Eapids, Mich., 

 one hundred miles, taking just a week for the round trip. All the in- 

 formation he carried could now be transmitted by wire in three minutes 

 and the increase in the amount now transmitted per man in the mail 

 service per week is represented by a geometrical progression with a tre- 

 mendous ratio. From this same farm his father hauled his wheat thirty- 

 five miles to Jackson, taking approximately fifteen hundred pounds to 

 the load, and requiring three days for the round trip. The Michigan 

 Central freight can now transport wheat at least sixty thousand times 

 faster; so that even though the most liberal division be made as to the 

 part contributed by an equivalent of a single man and team now, a man's 

 productivity is multiplied several thousand times. This is what we add 

 instead of an " equal dose." It may be claimed, however, that the intro- 

 duction of the railroad brought a period of phenomenal increasing re- 

 turns, but that they were not maintained. It is a fact that there has 

 not been an increase in speed at all in proportion to the outlay de- 

 voted to increasing speed, and the law of diminishing returns seems 

 herein to be finely illustrated. However, increase in transportation does 

 not mean simply increase in speed, but much more, it means number 

 and extent of persons and things that can be transported in a given 

 time. The number of people who have been brought into participation 

 in transportation through the extension of the railroads, the increase in 

 the power of locomotives, and the organization of the systems, demon- 

 strates that the rate of progress has been continuous and of the same 

 radical character as the change from stage-coach to express train. The 

 exhibition of increasing returns is multifarious. During the Boer War 

 I received the evening paper in an interior city at five thirty p.m. and 

 read of battles that occurred at six o'clock that same afternoon in South 

 Africa. This was in Tennessee near the home of Andrew Jackson who 

 fought the battle of New Orleans after the war was over, and he did not 

 then hear of peace until several weeks after it had been declared. 



Increase in units of production does not consist merely of adding 

 similar units. The saving of time by rapid transportation and inter- 

 communication, the organization of capital so that it may be turned 

 over several times where formerly it could perform but one service, 

 makes a multiplication almost inconceivable, and every one knows that 

 in the region of invention and organization we are just beginning to 

 open up discoveries for entry ; while the division of labor and the applica- 

 tion of the processes of efficiency-engineering give a potentiality to the 

 present units of labor that is revolutionary. If we will project our 



