AGRICULTURE AND THE SINGLE TAX. 481 



necessary to do the work. Our bridges are -usually designed and 

 built by the same company, so that the design within certain lim- 

 its corresponds to the available plant of the manufacturer, and the 

 expensive tools can be used over and over again. In English 

 practice, however, the bridges are designed according to the ideas 

 of the individual engineer, and then some firm has to build them 

 in all their details to correspond with the design. If the construc- 

 tion necessitates expensive machinery and tools, no company would 

 undertake them at any reasonable cost, as there would be very 

 little chance of any other similar design being offered upon which 

 they could use the same tools. 



In riveted work, however, the tools required are within certain 

 limits the same, regardless of the details of design. Pin-connected 

 bridges are much more economical for large work than riveted 

 ones ; and this fact, taken in connection with the unrivaled facili- 

 ties we have for doing the work, accounts for the fact that in the 

 building of large bridges American firms can underbid any others, 

 and not in any way lower the character of the work done.* 







AGRICULTURE AND THE SINGLE TAX. 



Br HOKACE WHITE. 

 I. 



|~N the second half of the eighteenth century there arose a school 

 -L of thinkers in France to whom, at a later period, J. B. Say 

 gave the name of physiocrats. The founder of the school was 

 Frangois Quesnay. Turgot was one of his disciples, and was the 

 most distinguished member of the group. De Gournay, the elder 

 Mirabeau, Morellet, and Dupont de Nemours are well-remem- 

 bered names of the physiocratic school. Adam Smith was in 

 Paris in the year 1764, and was much in the society of Quesnay 

 and his friends. The exchange of thoughts among these great 

 men must have been mutually beneficial, but the question that 

 has since been raised and discussed with some heat, whether the 

 author of the " Wealth of Nations " gained more from that inter- 

 course than he gave in return, is a barren controversy. 



At that time governmental interference with the business and 

 livelihood of the people was incessant and almost universal, and 



* Lattice riveted bridges and double intersection trusses have not been discussed, as 

 their introduction would only have obscured the object of the paper. 



In regard to the advantages of the American pin-connected bridges for long spans, we 

 may say that from the most recent data the time required for the erection of the bridge, 

 after everything is ready, is only about one twentieth of that required for the erection of 

 the English riveted bridges. 



VOL. XXXVI. 31 



