=====+========================+======================== | SHIPPING | RAILWAYS | MILLION TONS | TELEGRAPHS CABLES +-----+------------------+------------------------ |Sail | Steam | Carrying | Thousand Miles | | | Power | -----+-----+-------+----------+-------+--------+------- 1800 | 4.0 | | 4.0 | | | | | | | | | 1820 | 5.8 | .02 | 5.8 | | | | | | | | | 1830 | 7.1 | .1 | 7.5 | .2 | | | | | | | | 1840 | 9.0 | .3 | 10.4 | 5.4 | | | | | | | | 1850 |11.4 | .8 | 14.9 | 23.9 | 5. | .02 | | | | | | 1860 |14.8 | 1.7 | 21.7 | 67.3 | 100. | 1.5 | | | | | | 1870 |12.9 | 3.0 | 25.1 | 139.8 | 281. | 15. | | | | | | 1880 |14.4 | 5.8 | 37.9 | 224.9 | 440. | 49. | | | | | | 1890 | 9.1 | 8.2 | 42.3 | 390.0 | 768. | 132. | | | | | | 1900 | 6.6 | 13.8 | 62.1 | 500.0 | 1,180 | 200. | | | | | | 1910 | 4.6 | 22.0 | 92.8 | 637.0 | 1,307 | 291. | | | | | | 1913 | 3.8 | 26.5 | 109.9 | 690.0 | 1,462 | 330. =====+=====+=======+==========+=======+========+======= =344. Importance of roads in the present transportation system.=—A word of warning may be advisable before we leave this subject to study more recent means of transportation. Not many years ago a French economist estimated that not one twentieth of the settlements of the inhabited world were within less than a day’s distance from a railroad. Even in the most advanced countries the extent of roads far exceeds that of railroads, and only in the rarest cases do products reach the consumer without having traversed a stretch of common road. The road, therefore, takes a place in our modern economy more important than, in our carelessness, we generally admit. The unit for measuring the expense of transportation is the cost of moving a ton one mile; on a modern American railroad the average cost of a ton-mile is less than one cent. Even on the excellent roads of Europe the cost is ten cents or more; while it has been estimated that the average cost of moving farm produce to market over the common roads of the United States is twenty-five cents per ton-mile. Assuming that the average haul is twelve miles, and that three hundred million tons are carried in a year, the expense reaches the total of nine hundred million dollars, a sum greater than the operating expenses of all the railroads of the United States before 1900.