48 BULLETIN 102, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 
American industrialism differs from the industrialism of other 
nations in two respects; it places unusual emphasis upon the em- 
ployment of power and it couples an advanced industrial develop- 
ment, which means a high standard of living, with a vast expanse of 
territory. 
Each of these conditions imposes a special demand upon trans- 
portation, and the two combined have given rise to transportation 
difficulties that are threatening to throttle the economic life of the 
country. 
If unrelieved the situation will entail a deterioration in the stand- 
ard of living. 1 The effects of a lowered living scale so caused will 
not fall evenly the country over, but may be expected to be selective 
to the disadvantage of unfavored sections, with the setting up of 
economic discord and sectional dissension in the place of national 
unity. 
The issue can not be adequately met by furthering the develop- 
ment of the railways alone, for already this type of carrier has 
been pushed to such a point of overdevelopment as to constitute a 
critical weakness in the economic structure of the country. The 
source of the disqualification lies not merely in the sheer magnitude 
of the responsibility which the railways support, but also in their 
notably inferior elasticity in respect to industrial expansion as com- 
pared with the processes of manufacture. The power supply is the 
chief single contributor to both conditions of default. It not only 
comprises, mainly in the form of coal, more than one-third of the 
total freight of the country, but the dependence upon freight-hauled 
fuel on the part of an expanding industrial activity places an over- 
weight of burden upon transportation by virtue of the fact that 
coal, raw materials, and finished products represent three additional 
units of haulage to be reckoned with for every added unit of pro- 
duction. 2 Hence the logical way to correct the transportation unfit- 
ness of this country is to attack the matter through improvement in 
power usage. 
Three principles of transportation underlie industrial growth, and 
industrial activities in general conform to their prescriptions as a 
matter of course. These factors are represented in (1) the employ- 
ment of suitable facilities for the task of transportation, (2) the 
advance elimination of superfluous weight, and (3) the full utiliza- 
tion of the material transported. These conditions are seen to be 
the merest common sense; illustrations of conformity with them 
are on every hand; in the matter of power alone they have been 
utterly disregarded. In the working out of these principles, national 
experience has shown (1) that a transportation system of country - 
1 The situation, as a matter of fact, is already displaying its ability in that direction. 
2 See pp. 10-11 for the necessary qualifications. 
