MATERIAL EFFECTS OF SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS. 295 



manufacture, fitting, and working of which secure the existence 

 to two hundred thousand families at least in England alone ; 

 and the use of which enables a merchant, say in the corn trade, 

 to know the climatic situation of the day in every latitude 

 in Asia, America, Africa, Europe, Australia ; to know also 

 the prices of every market in the world on that day; and 

 at the same time to know also the quotations in every stock 

 in all the Exchanges of the whole world on the same day ! 



With that knowledge before his eyes he is able to regulate 

 his purchases in America, India, Russia, Australia; to order 

 his shipments at Odessa, New York, San Francisco, Val- 

 paraiso ; to direct the landing and delivery of corn, maize, 

 oats at Liverpool, Hull, Amsterdam, Marseilles, Trieste. 

 He does all this from his desk in his own office, or from the 

 Mark Lane Exchange, or from " the Baltic." And he does 

 all this by SPEAKING to his correspondents. He does it in 

 a few words. He speaks to fifty people in one short hour 

 instead of sending them as many different messages, most of 

 them fruitless, or as many written communications, most of 

 them incomplete at best. In the course of an hour he has 

 transacted business which would have taken six months to 

 transact fifty years ago, and that business amounts in bulk to 

 a hundred times more than that which his father would have 

 dared to face at a time. He has not saved time only; he has 

 also saved the salary of ten or twenty clerks ; and the rapidity 

 and increase of trade is such that the corn trade which his 

 father carried on before him in its entirety, but on a small 

 scale, has now been divided in thirty or forty separate 

 branches, of which he takes up two or three only. He takes 

 up perhaps only Russian wheat, or Indian wheat, or American 

 or English wheat ; or perhaps only maize, either American, 

 or Danubian, or Russian ; or perhaps only oats, either 

 Swedish, or Russian, or American ; or maybe barley, and of 

 this only brewing or feeding, French or Russian ; or again it 

 may be beans, peas, lentils, gram, and mutter ; putting aside 

 the flour and meal trade which is almost as large and just as 

 divided into sub-branches too. And then all these are again 

 subdivided into specialities, such as parcels, cargoes, options 

 each of which constitutes a separate trade. So, our corn 



