RAILROADS, TELEGRAPHS, AND CIVILIZATION. 313 



variety of articles. In the former respect, all parts of the earth have 

 been drawn within the circle of exchanges, even those which formerly 

 lay quite outside of such connections, either because they were thinly 

 inhabited or too difficult of access ; and the trade resources within civ- 

 ilized lands have been greatly expanded as the improvement of trans- 

 portation facilities has compensated for the difference between the 

 former cost and the present advance. The quantity of the goods used 

 in trade and the variety are increased, or at least become available for 

 whole classes of consumers, to whom their use was formerly forbidden 

 on account of their price. Our daily life affords abundant examples 

 of such articles. They are exemplified in the variety and prices of our 

 food resources, in the fashions of our clothing, in our architecture, and 

 in the warming and lighting of our houses. Coffee, tea, spices, and 

 other products of the tropics, which were formerly rare among the 

 wealthy, are now set upon the tables of the people, and are objects of 

 general use. The European demand for wheat brings into competition 

 steamers from Northern and "Western America, Chili, the states of the 

 La Plata, and India. 



In clothing, the moderation of price resulting from the cheapened 

 transportation of the raw materials and the wider distribution of the 

 fabrics come more into view than the introduction of new or hitherto 

 unknown or inaccessible materials, of which jute is the only example 

 we now recollect. That silk, which was formerly a mark of wealth, is 

 now worn by women of only moderate means, and cotton goods, 

 which were articles of luxury a hundred years ago, are made into 

 everybody's shirts and bedclothes, are in no small part due to the 

 cheapness and speed of freight-carriage as well as to the increased fa- 

 cilities for manufacturing them afforded by the introduction of steam 

 machinery. 



The improvements which railroads and steamers have made possi- 

 ble in our buildings are also obvious, in the use of solid materials in 

 regions far from the quarries. The coals with which we warm our 

 houses and from which we derive our gas-lights, and the petroleum 

 which burns in the lamps of the man of small means, articles which 

 have become indispensable in modern life, but the use of which was 

 formerly forbidden in all but the narrow regions of their productions, 

 are now carried into the most remote mountain-valleys and across 

 oceans, to wherever men live. 



As railways and steamers perform the hard, steady, physical work 

 of trade, so the telegraph assists the mental work of its service. Of 

 the more than a hundred million telegrams which the electric wires 

 carry over the earth yearly, by far the greatest part concern affairs of 

 trade. The telegraph is the medium of all important communications 

 in wholesale trade, and speculation could hardly exist without it. A 

 commercial solidarity covering the whole globe has been built upon 

 it, and the present generation for the first time sees a world-trade. 



