74 TRANSPORTATION 



roads, gave rise to a special technical literature. The authors foresee 

 the importance of the means of transportation and communication 

 for the economic, intellectual, political, and strategical life of the 

 nations, but they do not comprehend it to its full extent. Only 

 political economy has a presentiment of the effect of the improvements 

 of transportation in behalf of human society. But also political 

 economy shows a narrow conception and does not go beyond general 

 considerations of the economical effects and of the consequences of 

 the organization of post-roads and railroads. James Stewart men- 

 tions, in his Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy, 1767, only 

 the influence which the improvement of the country roads exerts 

 upon agriculture on account of the facilitated sale of its products. 



Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations (b. i, chap. 3), has a deeper 

 insight into the relations between space and national economy. He 

 recognizes the dependency of all economics upon the extent of 

 markets; this is augmented by good roads, channels, navigable 

 rivers. These means of transportation open the distant sections of 

 the country, which always are the most extended, and bring them 

 into connection with the consuming cities. Therefore, they are the 

 greatest progress of all; where they are missing, all production is 

 limited to the market which the surrounding country offers. For 

 this reason the entire interior of Africa and the whole northern part of 

 Asia is still in the same condition of barbarism as since the beginning 

 of the world. Smith was unable to foresee the possibility of a great 

 development of the ways and means of transportation. His recogni- 

 tion of the ways of communication is therefore limited to emphasizing 

 the greater advantages which the waterways possess in comparison 

 with the highways. 



International transportation over extended spaces appears to him 

 as something impossible; what wares could, by their value, com- 

 pensate the expenses of the transportation overland between London 

 and Calcutta; or, if some were so precious that they could counter- 

 balance the costs of transportation, with what security could they be 

 carried through the territories of so many barbarous tribes? 



The English followers of Smith, Ricardo and Malthus, do not con- 

 sider transportation at all; his French followers, Jean Baptiste Say 

 and Storch, have again taken up his idea, but have not developed it 

 further. Also these authors limit themselves to mention the greater 

 advantages of the waterways and to point to the importance of the 

 diminution of the freight expenses for production. 1 



Among the German economists Lotz and especially Karl Heinrich 

 Rau have paid special attention to transportation. Lotz 2 does not 



1 Say, Trails <f economic politique, 1S03, vol. 1 ; appendix, chap. 16; and Storch, 

 Conrx d 'economic politique, 1818, part T, liv. i, chap. 9. 



2 Ilandbuch der Staatswirlsckaftskhrc, 2. Aufl. 1837, S. 352. 



