72 TRANSPORTATION 



about one hundred thousand kilometers; its highways have never 

 been equaled up to to-day. 



The development of transportation has been limited to improve- 

 ments of the construction of vehicles up to the nineteenth century; 

 in the eighteenth century even the most highly cultivated countries 

 did not possess any regular system of roads. Until 1750 the large 

 highways leading from London to the north were constructed solidly 

 only at the first one hundred miles; further north they were changed 

 to a narrow road which was admissible for but a few horses. At 

 the same time most of the roads in the central and northern parts of 

 England were still unbounded. 1 What enormous progress have the 

 European nations made in the period of economic liberalism! In as 

 many decades as the Romans used centuries to construct their 

 much admired roads, the European nations have spread a net of 

 railroads over the countries which possess the threefold extent of the 

 Roman system of roads. Travelers upon Roman roads usually made 

 forty to fifty kilometers in one day; only at the beginning of the 

 nineteenth century this rate was changed and the fast mail reached 

 finally a rate of two hundred and fifty kilometers. To-day the trains 

 run with an average velocity of fifty to sixty kilometers in one hour; 

 hence, one thousand two hundred to one thousand four hundred 

 kilometers in one day. Thus men have been moved nearer to each 

 other, and the earth has, so to say, been diminished in the same pro- 

 portion as the velocity of transportation has increased. However, 

 not only on land, but also at sea we have surpassed all former 

 centuries. 



The greatest progress in navigation since the invention of the com- 

 pass is marked by the application of steam, not only on account of the 

 greater velocity of transportation, but especially because thus the 

 construction of larger vessels was made possible and the ships became 

 less dependent upon wind and weather; thus gradually a regular 

 communication on sea was instituted over the whole globe. 



In 1843 the first regular transatlantic line between Europe (Eng- 

 land) and America was opened, and now five hundred and seven- 

 teen seaports are reached from Europe by regular voyages. How 

 great the importance of this fact is may be shown by the fact that 

 the sea covers five sevenths of the surface of the earth, so that all 

 world's commerce and all world's transportation is done by sea. 

 Seventy to eighty per cent of the world's commerce is effected 

 on sea. At the beginning of the forties it took English troops 

 who sailed to India around the Cape of Good Hope seven months 

 (with bad weather) from Falmouth to Bombay; emigrants who at 

 this time sailed to North American ports traveled (against the wind) 

 four weeks. But when, in 1881, Francis Galton published the first 

 1 Spencer, Principles of Sociology, vol. in, p. 73. 



