526 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ones within cities, which, however, show us that existing arrange- 

 ments are impediments to better arrangements, let us pass to railways. 

 Observe how the inconveniently-narrow gauge (which, taken from that 

 of stage-coach wheels, was itself inherited from an antecedent system 

 of locomotion) has become an insuperable obstacle to a better gauge. 

 Observe, also, how the type of carriage, which was derived from the 

 body of a stage-coach (some of the early first-class carriages bearing 

 the words " trio, juncta in uno"), having become established, it is im- 

 mensely difficult now to introduce the more convenient type later 

 established in America; where they profited by our experience, but 

 were not hampered by our adopted plans. The enormous capital in- 

 vested in our stock of carriages cannot be sacrificed. Gradually to in- 

 troduce carriages of the American type, by running them along with 

 those of our own type, would be very difficult, because of our many 

 partings and joinings of trains. And thus we are obliged to go on 

 with a type that is inferior. 



Take, again, our system of drainage. Urged on as it was some 

 30 years ago as a panacea for sundry sanitary evils, and spread as it 

 has been by force of law through all our great towns, this system can 

 not now be replaced by a better system without immense difficulty. 

 Though, by securing decomposition where oxygen cannot get, and so 

 generating chemical compounds that are unstable and poisonous, it 

 has in many cases produced the very diseases it was to have prevented ; 

 yet it has become almost out of the question now to adopt those meth- 

 ods by which the excreta of towns may be got rid of at once innocu- 

 ously and usefully. Nay, worse one part of our sanitary administra- 

 tion having insisted on a sewage-system by which Oxford, Reading, 

 Maidenhead, "Windsor, etc., pollute the water London has to drink, 

 another part of our sanitary administration makes loud protests 

 against the impurity of the water, which it charges with causing dis- 

 ease (not remarking, however, that law-enforced arrangements have 

 produced the impurity). And now there must be a reorganization 

 that will be immensely impeded by the existing premature organiza- 

 tion, before we can have either pure air or pure water. 



Our mercantile arrangements, again, furnish abundant illustrations 

 teaching the same lesson. In each trade there is an established course 

 of business ; and, however obvious may be some better course, the 

 difficulties of altering the settled routine are, if not insurmountable, 

 still very considerable. Take, for instance, the commerce of litera- 

 ture. In days when a letter cost a shilling and no book-post existed, 

 there grew up an organization of wholesalers and retailers to convey 

 books from publishers to readers : a profit being reaped by each dis- 

 tributing agent, primary and secondary. Now that a book may be 

 ordered for a half-penny and sent for a few pence, the old system of 

 distribution might be replaced by one that would diminish the cost of 

 transfer, and lower the prices of books. But the interests of distribu- 



