ANNUAL, MEETING AT LEXINGTON. 183 



consume is insatiable and keeps pace with its ability to procure. It is 

 useless to refer to the almost numberless instances to prove it. The 

 post office, the cheap newspaper are sufficient to name. It is true also 

 that revenue accrues to the producer and furnisher more and more as 

 his price is reduced and consumption increases, provided, always he 

 receives something- over and above cost. And yet legislators and 

 business men often disregard this law of trade. The first proposition 

 to reduce postage to a penny per ounce was received with roars of 

 laughter. When the street cars were started at half hour trips and 25 

 cents per trip, he was deemed a lunatic who suggested a car per minute, 

 at two cents per trip. Two cents for a newspaper was a price looked 

 on as a fraud on creditors. 



It is remarkable that all those who get a monopoly or patent on 

 any supply or means of supply grow entirely oblivious of this law. 

 The thing they desire is scarcity — the smallest possible use at the 

 highest price. If A can make as much money by the use of a thousand 

 dollars, he is not going to use twelve hundred on the slightest risk. 

 He piefeis to receive his income from one hundred customers rather 

 than from two hundred. Where the source of supply is not monopolized 

 but the market is controlled the case may be different. The street cars 

 have always a competitor in the customer who can always serve him- 

 self; hence, although the routes are monopolized, the system has 

 developed as if under wholesome competition. 



Forty years ago the whole transportation of the country was over 

 public ways, such as roads, rivers and canals. You used your own 

 vehicles or vessels, or hired your neighbors'. Life at home was more 

 intensified, and a journey of one hundred miles was a great undertaking. 

 The raw material was largely consumed at home, as distant shipment 

 was expensive. Wheat was ground at home and the flour sent to Kew 

 York by wagon and canal boat — now the wheat is sent to New Y'ork 

 and the flour is shipped back. The country roads were scenes of re- 

 markable activity; droves of cattle, hogs, turkeys, horses and sheep; 

 convoys of monsterous wagons Avith from four to ten teams to each, 

 travellers on horse or afoot, now a private carriage came lumbering on 

 and then the U*. S. mail in a splendid coach drawn bj' six horses 

 thundered by, often followed by half a dozen. Familiar as the scene 

 was to the village, no one ever lived in one but felt, when stage time 

 came, a hushed expectancy in the air. At every five miles was the 

 half way house with its stable and bar; at every ten or twelve the 

 station with its immense barns bursting with feed, its great stables full 

 of horses, its solid comfortable public house, large dining room and 



