In this progress time as well as space is an important obstacle to be overcome, and we employ all means of increasing speed, or preserving against what we call “the ravages of time,” i. e., the operation of injurious forces acting in time upon most material substances. The methods employed for storing, curing and forcing to maturity the various forms of food needed in a community are aimed at meeting this obstacle, and add to its final worth; indeed these may be the means of giving value to all the other efforts in transportation, as in moving beef from Kansas City to New York, or fresh fruit from San Francisco to Boston. In the same process of putting things where they are needed, all merchants are engaged. Without the store, the order upon the shelves, the ready attendant and his despatch in meeting your demand, the pounds of sugar or salt essential to your comfort could not be had for love or money. These efforts are an essential part in the motion between wants and objects to satisfy them. Much of this kind of motion we include under the name commerce, though that word more directly implies the exchanges involved. The machinery of commerce is chiefly the means of bringing things wanted to the people who want them. Much, however, of the exertion required in all industries, especially in farming, is simply “to fetch and carry.” It will emphasize this fact to study, while you eat a piece of cherry pie, the processes involved in bringing it from the treetop, grainfield, dairy and cane-field, through mill and store and pantry and oven, to your plate. Transportation cuts a tremendous figure in production of wealth. In the first stages of social life it is almost the whole. The hunter talks of “bringing in” his game. Australians, Hottentots and Digger Indians lived by carrying themselves from one supply of food to another. _Transformation in production._—Much of the material gathered by us needs some change of form to suit our wants. An ax-helve has in it the original wood of the young hickory brought from the forest, but its form is fashioned by effort with ax, drawshave, scraper and sandpaper, until it satisfies the judgment of an expert chopper. This transformation is employed in any industries where wood, ivory, the metals and other minerals are shaped by tools, or by molding, or pressing or bending, to our wishes. Most fabrics are materials put into form. The word manufacture covers most of such work where materials are manipulated by shaping; but it also includes many operations with a different aim, to change the substance itself.