_Mining as related to Transportation._--Mining is a process which has to be local, because ores and coal are furnished by nature in a local way; and one might mention this as a second cause of extensive transportation. A great part of the carrying so occasioned depends, indeed, on the growth of the manufacturing centers, since mills and furnaces need great quantities of fuel. A means of heating private dwellings, of cooking food, etc., might conceivably be supplied in a local way, by the growth of forests; but the fuel needed for the centers of manufacturing and commerce has to come from distant points. The law of increasing returns in manufacturing, then, and natural location of mines are the most generic causes of transportation. The system which has resulted gives to everybody more and better food, as well as more and better goods of every kind, than he could possibly have had if the primitive system of local manufacturing had continued. The cheapness with which form utility is created in the mill and place utility on the railroad are the two causes which are at work. _The Rivalry between Producers of Form Utility and Producers of Form and Place Utilities._--In the technical language of economics, there has been a contest in efficiency between that creating of form utility which is done when goods are made in households or in small villages, and that joint process of creating form and place utility which consists in making goods at central points and carrying them to the widely scattered homes of consumers. The latter process, involving as it does the necessity of creating two utilities instead of one, is now by far the cheaper. _The Ultimate Limit of Charges for Transportation._--Charges for transportation have as one extreme limit the difference between the cost of making goods at one point and the cost of making them at another. This rule is applicable, of course, only to those numerous cases in which it is physically possible to create the goods at both points. If they can be made at point A for ten dollars, by using five days' labor, and at point B for twenty dollars, by using ten days' labor, ten dollars would furnish the extreme limit of a possible charge for carrying them from A to B. In a certain number of cases the actual charge approximates this extreme limit. With a mill in A, working with much economy, and a number of household workshops in B producing with less economy, the product of the large mill may invade the territory supplied by the little workshops, and the carrier may receive in return for transportation about as much as the difference between the two costs of production. With a great mill at A and a small one at B, the same thing may happen. [Illustration: C | | COMPETITIVE | CARRYING BY | HIGHWAY v A------------------------>B ]