16 Flux, Costs of Sea Transport in proportion to Values. 



profits and a poorer livelihood to the risks of changing 

 occupation. 



To determine whether or not the stimulus to the fall 

 in prices was provided by reduced transport charges is not 

 easy. If we could know with certainty which of these 

 movements was first in point of time, we might be assisted 

 in our judgment. I do not know that it would be easy to 

 provide an answer to the question of priority. 



An important reflection on the result is this : that 

 the great improvements in facilities of transport do not 

 appear to have released any fraction of the energies of 

 the world from the task of conveying materials from 

 places where they are (comparatively) of slight value 

 to places where they are (comparatively) of great value 

 to the task of altering the form of the materials or 

 their nature so as to fit them for the service of mankind. 

 In fact, regarding the relative increases in steam-power 

 in the two classes of industry, the conclusion, altogether 

 apart from anything advanced in these pages, would be 

 that transport occupies a larger proportion of the energies 

 of the world than formerly. Cognate to this is the 

 further fact that the series of handlings between the 

 wholesale seller and the retail buyer absorb also a larger 

 proportion of value than formerly, and that the fall 

 in wholesale prices is only partially reflected in retail 

 prices. 



APPENDIX. 



It seems desirable to make some attempt at testing 

 the probability of truth in the figures here given. As 

 I have no new figures of actual freights paid, I may be 

 allowed to refer to figures given by Mr. Stephen Bourne 

 and Sir Robert Giffen in papers published by them. In 

 1875 Mr. Bourne stated, in a paper read before the Royal 

 Statistical Society, that a careful series of calculations 



