Great as have been the changes in ocean transportation, still greater changes are pending. The transatlantic business shows the most marked changes. From the old time packetship to the early type of steamship was but the first step. Faster vessels were built, and the space devoted to cargo was encroached upon by enormous engines and boilers, by big coal bunkers, and by large saloons and an increased number of state-rooms. The hulls changed from the bulging sides of the first types to the narrow, racing pattern of to-day. Speed and the arrangements for the comfort of a large list of passengers robbed the vessels of their freight capacity, and now the freight of an ocean greyhound is a secondary consideration. This necessitated the creation of a distinct class, known as the freighter. The first railway cars having compartments for passengers, baggage, and freight were changed to express trains, where speed and comfort are the first considerations, and freight trains, where carrying capacity is the main object. In just the same manner, and for the same reasons, the ocean traffic is undergoing changes. The day cannot be far distant when the passenger ships will take only passengers, mails, specie, and express packages. The best-informed nautical men to-day declare that the progress of the last five years, remarkable as it has been, is but a circumstance compared with the possibilities of the future. [Illustration: Unloading and Loading a Coastwise Steamer by Electric Light.] The ocean greyhound is simply an exponent of the times. What the limited express trains are on land, the racer is upon the sea—the “Atlantic Limited.” Expense is no object. The faster the ship, the greater the rush for passage in her. She is, of course, a floating palace of magnificence, but speed is the main object, and speed is at times as important for certain classes of freight as it is for passengers. The hue and cry that steamship companies are endangering the lives of their passengers by ocean racing is pointed in the wrong direction. It is the public who are to blame, if blame it is to annihilate time and space by the genius of man. The owners of these vessels spend millions to build ships, and then risk both their capital invested, and the reputation of their line for safety, in order to satisfy their patrons. People of the nineteenth century—Americans in particular—are in a hurry, and never stop to consider the enormous expense, the immense consumption of coal, the fearful and terrible strain on the firemen and coal-passers down in the bowels of the great vessel. Everything is done with a rush. Lightning express trains across continents and racers upon the oceans are necessities of the day.