terms with Great Britain for the ocean carrying trade. The Civil War and the development of our internal resources, in which the coasting trade must be included, joined with causes which, of late years, have been the subject of political controversy, abruptly checked our maritime growth, and during the last thirty years we have so far ceased to be a factor in the ocean trade that our merchant flag is unknown to the Suez Canal and is a rarity in Continental ports. Germany's masterly industrial organisation and aggressive ambition during fifteen years out of her brief existence as an empire have already secured for her the second rank on the seas, and in the magnitude of individual maritime enterprises the first rank. The two great German steamship lines about a year hence will, combined, have an ocean tonnage in carrying power virtually equal to that of the world in 1800. National generosity, unscientifically applied for some years, has not enabled France to retain third rank. The signal success of this generation has been Norway's. With scant resources outside of industry, frugality, sobriety, and inborn love of the sea, the Norwegians, within the limits of the freight trade, to which they have devoted themselves, have won unsung triumphs, surpassing the exploits of the Vikings.

The growth of corporations, however, has somewhat diminished the significance of the flag. While national ownership is generally a condition to the use of the flag, modern international movements of capital have in numerous instances given the pecuniary interest in shipping to the citizens or subjects of another Power than that whose flag and register are used. Thus, until a few years ago, American capital owned the two most powerful British auxiliary cruisers, and during our late war one of the choicest Spanish prizes taken by our navy was, in fact, owned by not unfriendly British subjects, with a cargo from our own ports.

In the maritime news of the Evening Post for November 16, 1801, were announced the entries of the ships Commerce from Hamburg, 53 days; Eagle, from Dublin, 55 days; Alleghany, from Liverpool, 63 days. In November, 1900, the citizen of New York could embark on a steamship, and, in less time than the shortest of those three voyages, could reach by sea the uttermost port of civilisation. Manila, Sydney, Honolulu, Yokohama, Cape Town, Valparaiso, are as near as London was then. Through the progress of merchant shipping ocean areas have been reduced, as it were, to one third the vast stretches upon which the beginning of the century looked forth. The gain to civilisation and to the brotherhood of man has been immeasurable.

RAILROAD ECONOMY IN THE NINETEENTH

CENTURY

BY ARTHUR T. HADLEY

HE history of the railroad is almost coincident in

Time with the nineteenth century itself; for alTHE

though rails had been laid in coal mines for a long time previous, the first railroad intended for general traffic was chartered in 1800. This was a line from Wandsworth to Croydon, in the suburbs of London, and was operated by horses. During the years which immediately followed, a number of similar lines were constructed in different parts of England.

The first step toward the use of steam instead of horsepower was made in 1814 by the discovery that cars could be propelled by the adhesion of a smooth wheel to a smooth rail. Inventors at once set themselves to work on the problem of generating the power to move such a wheel in a locomotive engine. For this purpose two things were needed,— a very hot fire and a large heating surface. The invention of the tubular boiler provided the latter; the use of an escape-steam blast to secure a strong draught provided the former. The combination of the two by George Stephenson produced the modern locomotive, complete in all its essential features.

The first actual use of the locomotive was on the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825. It was first applied on a large scale as a motive power for handling general traffic on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway five years later. America was quick to follow the example

of England in its use. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, chartered in 1827, opened in 1830, after brief experiments with horse-power and even with sails, soon chose steam as the best motive power. Steam railroads were built almost simultaneously in the neighbourhood of Boston, in the coal regions of Pennsylvania, in the neighbourhood of Albany, and in South Carolina. All through the early years of railroad enterprise there was active emulation between England and the United States as to which country should equip itself most rapidly with railroads. The developments of the electric telegraph a few years later greatly increased the efficiency and safety of railroad running, and gave a new impetus to the growth of the industry.

In matters of invention which concerned the permanent way, England took the lead. Her abundance of capital, her density of traffic, and the habits of solid construction in which her engineers had been trained caused the English track to be speedily brought to a high standard of excellence. The location was arranged to avoid gradecrossings; the block-signal system was developed in such a manner as to give safeguard against collisions. A little later the system of interlocking points and signals provided a similar safeguard against derailments. It was many years before the United States could even approximate its practice to the English standards in this respect. The American traffic was so sparse that many of them were unnecessary. The capital for building American railroads was so scarce that if rigid requirements in this respect had been insisted upon, we should have waited many years before we could have built them at all. To offset our deficiency in this respect, we developed a superior system of equipment. To make up for the ir regularities of the track, a system of locomotive building was adopted which, without sacrifice of strength, gave greater flexibility and power to bear shocks. To

make up for the greater liability to collisions and other train accidents, a system of car construction was devised with a longitudinal instead of a transverse arrangement of beams, which rendered these accidents far less disastrous when they occurred. Brake power was always more liberally used in the United States than in England; and about 1870 the invention of the air-brake gave the engineer a power of control over his train vastly superior to anything which had previously existed.

The results obtained in the matter of railroad speed were for a long time not so great as the inventors of the locomotive had confidently predicted. A rate of sixty miles an hour was reached at a very early period in railroad enterprise. Beyond that, each successive increment of speed has been attended with great difficulty. For a long time nearly all the rapid running of trains was done in England, the standard of track and equipment in other countries being hardly sufficient to admit of good results in this respect. As late as 1888, a careful statistical investigation showed that the daily mileage of trains running faster than forty miles an hour including stops was about sixty-three thousand in England, about fourteen thousand in the United States, and very small indeed in the rest of the world. Since that time there has been so much gain in American roadbeds that a similar comparison at the present day would probably show the two countries on a footing of substantial equality in this respect. The most rapid regular performances for long distances-two hundred miles and over-are at rates of from fifty to fifty-five miles an hour. For short distances we find schedules arranged at rates of above sixty miles an hour, while there are individual records running as high as ninety and one hundred. At a point a little above the latter figure we seem to reach the physical limit of speed except on a down grade; the figures of fifty and sixty miles represent the operating limit of what is