TRANSPORTATION 75 



go any farther than Smith, Say, and Storch, although he was able to 

 observe the railroads. But he mentions them in an annotation, as 

 standing between highways and waterways; the latter he considers 

 still the most important and the best. Rau has accomplished, for 

 Germany, the separation of the theoretical Volkswirthschaftslehre 

 from the Volkswirthschaftspolitik, i. e.,the separation of the knowledge 

 of the laws of economic life from the knowledge of the duties of 

 the state with regard to economics; he treats transportation in the 

 Volkswirtschaftspolitik 1 originally as an aid to certain kinds of com- 

 mercial affairs. Thus still in 1844; later among the measures by 

 which the state furthers commercial intercourse. In accordance 

 with this systematic position he does not deal with a theoretical 

 conception or with considerations of transportation which would go 

 beyond the economic deliberations. He describes the existing 

 means of transportation (highways, waterways, post -roads, railroads) 

 rather as organizations of public administration than as members 

 of the social organism. Thus he is led to a penetrating investiga- 

 tion of the state's relation to these institutions, but for this reason 

 his treatises lose the universal character. Adolf Wagner, who has 

 revised the books of Rau, has still further considered this administra- 

 tive, political, economic side of treating transportation, 2 while Gustav 

 Cohn opened, with great success, the series of the historical and 

 economic monographs with his English railroad studies. 3 



Friedrich last and Knies have demonstrated, in monographs, the 

 importance of transportation. List has, above all, recognized the 

 great influence of the railroads upon the expansion of agricultural 

 and industrial production, but also far beyond this he saw the im- 

 portance for the national life of the nations. 4 In his monograph 5 

 Knies has investigated the railroads and their influences in differ- 

 ent directions; he has correctly recognized, not only their economic, 

 but also cultural, political, and strategical significance, and pointed, 

 in a later treatise 6 especially, to the increased international com- 

 munication and to the transportation of raw products en masse as 

 decisive results of the improved means of transportation. Taken 

 all in all, even up to 1875, the investigation of transportation has 

 advanced but little. Schaeffle and Sax have given utterance to this. 

 Schaeffle pointed to the far-reaching relations connected with trans- 

 portation, to which the former connection of the ways, institutions 

 of transportation, and means of communication with the economic 



1 Lehrbuch der polilischen Oekonomie, 2. Band; Grundsatze der Volkswirtschafts- 

 politik, 1. AufL 1828, 5. Aufl. 1863. 



2 Lehrbuch der Finanzwissenschaft, 1. Abteil. Privatcswerb des Staates, 1877. 



3 Untersuchungen uber die englische Eisenbahnpolitik, 187-1, 1875. 



4 Ueber ein sdchsisches Eisenbahnsystem als Grundlnge des attgemeinen deutschen 

 Eisenbahnsy stems, 1833; das dcutschc Eisenbahnsystem, 1841. 



* Die Eisenbahnen und ihre Wirkungen, 1853. 



6 Die polilische Oekonomie von geschichtlichen Standpunkt, 1883, S. 444. 



