3 14 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The connection is most evident in transactions in goods of large con- 

 sumption, and is manifested in the tendency to equalization in prices 

 and in the rates of discount. The price of the staple articles of com- 

 merce is fixed in the market of the world. The price of wheat is de- 

 termined every day by the telegraphic reports to Chicago of the day's 

 transactions in the principal places on the globe where wheat is handled, 

 and the price of cotton in a similar manner at New Orleans and Liver- 

 pool ; and in all financial transactions the most remote commercial 

 centers respond to one another with a facility and celerity that can 

 hardly be excelled by those with which two houses separated only by 

 the Thames could communicate. 



This extension of quick communication over the whole globe has 

 been attended with the further advantages of making commercial prod- 

 ucts accessible to the largest possible circle of consumers, of making 

 capital, which flows where it can be applied with the most profit, easily 

 available at such spots, and in the acquisition of a number of storage- 

 points whence goods can be dispatched with but little delay to the 

 places where there is a demand for them. Conditioned upon these 

 circumstances are the general decline of interest and the easier 

 avoidance or quicker relief of the distress which may arise in single 

 countries or districts from the temporary scarcity of some particular 

 necessity. Railroads and steamboats have made the prevalence of 

 real famine and the misery associated with it impossible so long as 

 any purchasing power exists in a country or a city. Speculation, so 

 much abused, while it looks out first for its own interests, takes care 

 to compensate for local failures of crops by sending in timely supplies, 

 and has in railroads and telegraphs ready and powerful instruments 

 for its enterprise. That many men still actually suffer from hunger 

 is not to be denied ; but it nevertheless appears now to be impossible 

 for the most of the world that a local scarcity of food arising from 

 dearth or any disaster shall not be immediately remedied from with- 

 out. 



This wide community of interests also has its shadows. The ease 

 with which large quantities of goods can be carried from countries 

 where they have accumulated in excess under favoring conditions, to 

 regions where this production is not equally favored, is fraught with 

 disadvantages to the local producers by depreciating the prices of 

 their goods when the circumstances are already hard for them. The 

 depressing competition of American and Indian wheat in the European 

 markets, which the home farmers lament with so much reason, is a 

 striking example of this. Still more serious is the rapidity with which 

 the effects of a commercial crisis occurring anywhere are felt in all 

 markets. But these negative effects of solidarity of interests, hard as 

 they may bear at times upon individuals, are insignificant as compared 

 with the advantages it brings to the general welfare. 



Apace with the widening of the trade in goods, has production 



