410 INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



effects on railways; where, besides extensive improvements 

 in rolling stock, the permanent way has been revolutionized 

 by the substitution of steel rails for iron rails. In England 

 32,000 miles of single track have been thus re-laid, and in 

 the United States 175,000 miles.* 



Something more has happened. While this cheaply 

 manufactured steel has entered into, and improved, many 

 other manufacturers (a much greater number than above 

 enumerated) each primary set of changes has initiated many 

 secondary sets. Each of these cheapened or improved pro 

 ducts has itself become a centre of radiating influences. 

 Take an example. A steel-rail outlasts six iron rails; and 

 since a large element in the cost of maintaining a railway is 

 the replacing of worn-out rails, the use of steel-rails achieves 

 a great economy, which, under the influence of competition, 

 entails some reduction in fares and freights. There follows 

 a lowering of prices of various commodities, and, in many 

 cases, the bringing to places of consumption commodities 

 which higher freights would have excluded. By the use of 

 steel for ships, similar multitudinous effects are produced 

 upon the prices and distributions of sea-borne commodities; 

 since one-fourth increase of cargo-carrying capacity is ob 

 tained in a steel-ship. 



767. The moral of all this is weighty. Immensely more 

 complex than at first appears is the inter-dependence of 

 businesses, and far closer than we at once see has become 

 the integration of them. An involved plexus having centres 



* Napoleon called the English &quot;a nation of shopkeepers,&quot; and, as before, 

 so since, they have done much to show that the counter-jumping order of 

 intelligence characterizes not the bourgeoisie only but the ruling classes. 

 Hence they have thought it enough that Sir Henry Bessemer should receive 

 an honour like that accorded to a third-rate public official on his retirement, 

 or to a provincial mayor on the occasion of the Queen s Jubilee. In the 

 United States they understand better how to honour achievements. In 

 different parts of the Union, one county and six cities have received the 

 name &quot; Bessemer.&quot; 



