THE ECONOMIC OUTLOOK. 5 



formerly constituted almost insuperable obstacles in the way of 

 frequent intercourse between people of different races, countries, 

 and communities, and have made the civilized world, as it were, 

 one great neighborhood. Every increased facility that is afforded 

 for the dissemination of intelligence, or for personal movement, 

 finds a marvelously quick response in an extended use. The 

 written correspondence — letters and cards — exchanged through 

 the world's postal service, more than doubled between the years 

 1873 and 1885 ; while in the United States the number of people 

 annually transported on railroads alone exceeds every year many 

 times the total population of the country; the annual number 

 for the New England States being more than sixteen times great- 

 er than their population. Under these powerful but natural 

 educating influences, there has been a great advance in the in- 

 telligence of the masses. They have come to know more of what 

 others are doing ; know better what they themselves are capable 

 of ; and their wants have correspondingly increased, not merely 

 in respect to quantities of the things to which they have always 

 been accustomed, but very many articles and services which 

 within a comparatively recent period were regarded as luxuries, 

 are now almost universally considered and demanded as neces- 

 sities. At the same time, the increased power of production and 

 distribution, and the consequent reduction in the cost of most com- 

 modities and services, have also worked for the satisfaction of 

 these wants in such a degree that a complete revolution has been 

 effected during recent years in the every-day life of all classes of 

 the people of the great industrial and commercial countries. Let 

 any one compare the condition of even the abject poor of Lon- 

 don, as described in recent publications, with the condition of 

 English laborers as described by writers of acknowledged au- 

 thority not more than forty years ago,* and he can not resist the 

 conclusion that the very outcasts of England are now better pro- 

 vided for than were multitudes of her common laboring-men at 

 the period mentioned. 



But the widening of the sphere of one's surroundings, and a 

 larger acquaintance with other men and their pursuits, have long 

 been recognized as not productive of content. f Writing to his 

 nephew a hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson thus concisely 



* The condition of agricultural laborers in general, and large classes of artisans, in the 

 United Kingdom, forty or fifty years ago, as described by Carlyle in his " Past and Pres- 

 ent " and " Sartor Resartus," and by another most reliable English authority, Mr. W. T. 

 Thornton, in his " Overpopulation and its Remedy," was so deplorable that it is now 

 difficult to realize that it ever existed. 



f Increased facility for communication between Great Britain and the United States 

 has without doubt been a large factor in occasioning the present profound discontent of 

 Ireland; and political subjugation and their existing land system have been more intol- 

 erable to the Irish peasant and artisan, since they have been enabled to compare the in- 



