TRANSPORTATION 73 



isochronic passage charts (on which the average time is indicated 

 to navigate from a given point to certain other points in the 

 shortest way and with the fastest means of transportation), it 

 was shown that one could reach from the English Channel all ports 

 of the earth in less than forty-five days. The normal ship of the 

 thirties had a tonnage of 200, rarely 300; to-day 6000 to 7000 tons 

 are considered the average. 



A steamer like Kaiser Wilhelm II of the North German Lloyd, with 

 a register tonnage of 19,500, is as large as the entire commercial fleet 

 of Bremen or Hamburg at certain times in the beginning of the nine- 

 teenth century. At present the oceans of the earth are carrying 

 about 30,000 vessels, with an aggregate tonnage of 30,000,000 tons. 

 The combined railroad lines are nearly one million kilometers long; 

 the telegraph cables, one third of which are submarine lines, have a 

 length of 2,000,000 kilometers. 



History of mankind has no example for any such achievement in 

 former times, not even in the smallest measure. Only in the nine- 

 teenth century man has subdued space, diminished the globe, and 

 moved nearer to each other the nations with their mutual, hostile, or 

 brotherly relations, so that nowadays our mind must obliterate the 

 national boundaries and must comprehend continents, if it will judge 

 the forces innate to peoples and measure their effects. The conse- 

 quences of these changes in transportation are, to-day, still rather 

 felt than clearly recognized. We know that these changes influence 

 all conditions of social life, economics, politics, the production of 

 manufactures as well as of agriculture, of commerce, science and art 

 and military organization, national feeling and individual life; but, 

 as Gustav Cohn * remarks correctly, even if the theme is limited to 

 the economic effects, most work of its investigation is yet to be done. 

 This must not be wondered at; the most decisive progress has been 

 made only in the last twenty-five to thirty years, so that we find 

 ourselves still in midst of a process of transformation whose limits 

 cannot be drawn. The more interesting is the question which I am 

 asked to answer, in which wise science in its different branches has 

 treated this powerfully great subject. 



Scientific treatment of transportation has been very insignificant 

 till late in the nineteenth century. Only the first greater organiza- 

 tion of transportation, the mail, invited historical reflections and 

 juristic investigations, while the social importance was not regarded. 2 

 The development of the construction of streets and the improvements 

 of the waterways have been treated, in the eighteenth century, in 

 technical writings; later the new means of transportation, the rail- 



1 Nationalokonomie des Handels und des Verkehrswesens, 1898, S. 976. 



J Cf. Huber, Die geschichtliche Entwicklung des modernen Verkehrs. Tubingen, 



