TRANSPORTATION 79 



Ratzel shows in his Political Geography. 1 He is able to pursue the 

 natural dependency of communication as regards its influence upon 

 the political organization of men in the formation of states and upon 

 their position in the world. The kernel of his discussion is that the 

 main features of the surface of the earth direct the chief currents of 

 communication. The communication by sea is determined by the 

 distribution of land and water, climate, and physical condition of the 

 sea-water; the communication by land depends upon climate, quality 

 of the soil formation of the surface, irrigation, and the vegetative 

 properties of the soil. Therefore, there is no random distribution 

 of the communication on the globe, but a normal, geographical 

 division into main and subordinate lines determined by the charac- 

 ter of the surface of the earth. They bestow upon each part of 

 the earth an individual character which is determined by the tend- 

 ency of each communication to grow, to get around obstacles, to 

 cross from one border to the other, from the habitable to the inhos- 

 pitable regions, and from those more favored by nature to the less 

 favored. 2 



No science is so closely connected with transportation as the 

 technical science. It sprang up, together with the development of 

 transportation, in the course of the nineteenth century, and grew 

 directly w r ith its progress. A prominent German technologist sees 

 four stages in the development of transportation. It begins with 

 finding the best way, the natural tracing formed by valleys, fords of 

 rivers, mountain passes, etc. The second stage is the development 

 of vehicles. Another progress is made by the improvement of the 

 road. The perfection attained by the Romans had been lost and 

 was reached again only in the nineteenth century. But the system 

 of roads had been little extended when a new stage of development 

 began with the application of steam power. Only in this latter 

 period the empirically founded activity yields to the scientifically 

 established. The scientific treatment of constructing roads can be 

 traced back to the technical construction of roads, which was intro- 

 duced since Macadam (1820), but the science of engineering took 

 its rise only with the invention of railroads. The railroad engineers 

 found themselves in a difficult position in the first half of the nine- 

 teenth century. Without personal experience and scientific founda- 

 tion of their task, they had to rely mostly upon their technical 

 instinct, by which they were not rarely led astray. 3 Only the variety 

 of experiences and the new tasks of construction have become the 

 cause that the different technical theories, as those of the earth- 

 work, the vaults, the properties of material, of the wooden and iron 



1 2. Aufl., Miinchen, 1903. 



Ratzel, Politische Geographic, 2. Aufl., S. 473-475. 

 3 Birk und Krauter, Der Eisenbahnban, Einleitung und Allgemeines, 1897, S. 27. 



