=387. Economy.=—As to the economy in the carriage of wares resulting from recent improvements much has already been said in other chapters, but the student may find in the following estimate, by a German author, a helpful summary. For $3 a hundred kilograms of wheat (220 pounds, a little less than 4 bushels) could be carried the following distances in kilometers (about five eights of a mile): on a common road 100, on a good road 400, on an early railroad 1,500, on a modern railroad 4,500, on an ocean steamer 25,000. There is little danger that the student will underestimate the advantage to commerce of this reduction in the cost of carriage, but he should note also the economy resulting from the speed and certainty of modern instruments of transportation. A considerable part of the world’s capital, a century ago, was locked up in goods in transit or in warehouse. These goods were of no use to anybody. Nowadays not only are goods put where they are wanted, they are put there with such speed and certainty that merchants do not need to keep a large stock on hand, and the stock in transit is relatively small. In the India trade, for instance, when a voyage around the Cape of Good Hope took a good part of a year, and the time of arrival could not be calculated within a month or two, India merchants had to keep great stocks to meet the varying demand. Now that steamers make the trip by the Suez Canal in a month, and the time of their arrival is exact to a day, dealers order goods as they are needed, and the great India warehouses have been rendered in large part useless for their original purpose.