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hundred miles before the freight equals its marketable 

 value. Thus the economic limit of transportation is ex- 

 tended tenfold by the application of steam power, and 

 Chicago becomes great, while without this means of gar- 

 nering in the golden harvests of the prairie, she might be 

 an Indian trading post and little m(5re. 



Water has been, in modern times, the great carrier of 

 products. To the interchange of products by water, the 

 term "commerce" has been applied, almost exclusively. 

 For commerce, thus understood, high claims have been 

 advanced. Commerce has been held to be the civilizer of 

 the world. Hovering on her wliite wings from sea to 

 sea, she has been likened to the dove of Peace. She has 

 been called, too, the dispenser of the world's wealth — 

 the arbiter of the destiny of princes. Let us examine 

 these claims for a moment. 



Nothing contributes so much toward keeping alive the 

 unholy fires of prejudice, alienation and hate as geograph- 

 ical separations among men. Bring human beings to- 

 gether and they at once perceive — and tliat, too, by 

 instinct and without persuasion — that their fellows are 

 more like themselves and less ill-disposed than they had 

 fancied them to be. Thus commerce, being the great 

 carrier of persons, has been the great pacificator, and rec- 

 onciler, — and, among human agencies, the master-educa- 

 tor and civilizer of mankind. But commerce has also 

 been the dispenser of wealth! 



The East has been the historic, as it has been the 

 fabled source of the world's riches. Pactolus of the an- 

 cient poet enriches, with its golden sands, the India of 

 the modern statesman, and the glowing "wealth of Ormus 

 and of Ind " are not more the revel of Milton's fancy 

 than the record of the Rothschilds' ledger. To this result 

 circumstances of soil and climate conspire with an ancient 



