Queer Methods of Travel 



709 



exceed a half bushel each. These they fill 

 with the coal, and they are passed by 

 hand, one at a time, to the person sta- 

 tioned on the first of the platforms, and 

 he passes them, one by one, up to the per- 

 son on the platform next above him. 

 Thus, hour after hour, a steady stream, 

 or perhaps several streams, of these bas- 

 kets flows up the side of the ship, passed 

 from hand to hand, men and women 

 working together indiscriminately and 

 emptying barge after barge until the ves- 

 sel has received its requisite supply. But 

 it is a slow method at the best, and I well 

 remember the experience of lying for two 

 days in a broiling sun, just off Shimone- 

 siki, waiting for a multitude of Japanese 

 men and women to perform a service 

 which might have been performed in an 

 hour by the appliances in use in the 

 United States. Here a great crane, oper- 

 ated by steam or electricity, picks up a 

 car carrying perhaps 50 tons of coal and 

 pours its contents gently into the hold of 

 the steamer lying alongside. 



The picture of the mail-carriers in 

 Alaska (on page 710) illustrates the ex- 

 tent to which the reindeer has become a 

 factor in the life of that section, due to 

 the foresight and energy of Dr Sheldon 

 Jackson. 



And now, as we return home to our 

 land of the horse, the trolley car, the rail- 

 road, and the horseless road vehicle, and 

 contrast our own conditions of travel and 

 transportation with those of the tropics 

 and the orient, I want to suggest the 

 possibility of the extension of certain of 

 our transportation methods to those coun- 

 tries, and the development of prosperity 

 which may result. 



Clearly the conditions of transportation 

 in the tropics and the orient are due, in 

 part at least, to the absence of that noble 

 animal which has so served us in the 

 temperate-zone Occident — the horse. He 

 has rendered possible the development of 

 Europe and America by transporting the 

 product of the farm, the mine, and the 

 factor)' to the common carriers — the 

 ocean, the river, the canal, and the rail- 

 way — and to the sections thus developed 



has come great prosperity. In the tropics, 

 where the horse cannot endure the cli- 

 mate, and in the densely populated orient, 

 where land cannot be spared to supply 

 him with food, the facilities for transpor- 

 tation to a common carrier are inade- 

 quate ; the common carrier is therefore 

 not provided, and there is sluggishness, 

 lack of production for exchange, lack of 

 commerce, lack of prosperity. True, 

 rivers do exist in those countries, and 

 railroads can be built; but if they lack 

 some satisfactory means of transporting 

 the natural products from the place of 

 production to that common carrier, the 

 carrier will not be supplied, the farm will 

 not be developed, the mine will not be 

 opened, the factory will not be built, and 

 that prosperity which comes from a ready 

 market for products cannot prevail. As a 

 result, the horseless areas of the world 

 have remained undeveloped and unpros- 

 perous, while the area supplied with the 

 horse has developed and become ex- 

 tremely prosperous. 



Now comes the final question, whether 

 the ingenuity of man has provided any 

 substitute for the horse, which can be 

 utilized in those areas where the horse 

 cannot , exist because of climatic condi- 

 tions or lack of space for the production 

 of his food. To this question I think I 

 may answer in the affirmative. For many 

 years man has been experimenting in 

 attempts to transport merchandise and 

 men by some machine which carries 

 within itself its own propelling power. 

 He learned a century ago that he could 

 do this on the water by the steamship. 

 Then he soon learned that he could drive 

 a wheeled vehicle on land by power pro- 

 duced within itself, provided he sup- 

 plied it with an iron or steel track on 

 which its wheels might run, and with 

 this knowledge the railroads spread over 

 all of that part of the world where horses 

 could be found to bring the product to 

 their stations. 



But until the beginning of the twentieth 

 century man had not solved the problem 

 of operating self-propelling vehicles on 

 ordinarv dirt roads or across stretches of 



