To my mind it is a matter of fascinating import that the long procession of the world’s advancement down to the century just ended was conditioned by and dependent upon agencies of transportation which were themselves essentially unprogressive and incapable of important betterment. True, there were minor modifications from time to time in the line of mechanical adjustment, but the general methods employed, and the results obtained, showed no marked improvement or material alteration from those applied in the earliest days of commerce. Reduced to the forms in ordinary use there were at the last as at the first the beast of burden on land and the oar and sail on water. Yet thus hampered and restricted in the means of transportation, which is the basis of all commercial activity, there was built up in the long process of years the varied and advanced civilization which the last century inherited. Then all at once, as it were, into and through this social and industrial structure, so highly organized, so complex in character, so vast in its ramifications, yet so adjusted and adapted to the fixed limitations of animal power, was thrust the new mode of conveyance by mechanical force, and the third stage of transportation was suddenly ushered in by the employment of steam as its principal motive power. The advent of this new and marvelous agency was the greatest and most transforming event in the history of mankind. It wrought an immediate and radical change in the elemental need of society, the means of distribution. The primary function was altered both in essence and relations. The conditions of commercial intercourse were abruptly and completely altered, and a veritable new world of energy and opportunity invited the conquest of the race. As time goes, this revolution has been phenomenally rapid. But yesterday, as it seems, and the first iron track had not been laid, and even the idea of steam as an available motive power had hardly been conceived; yet already, within the limits of an ordinary lifetime, long lines of railway—which sprung into being as if born of enchantment—have stretched out in every direction from one end of the land to the other. They have bridged the rivers, penetrated the wilderness, climbed over mountains and traversed the deserts with their highways of steel. There is scarce a hamlet so remote as not to hear the shrill whistle of the locomotive, and the clang of its warning bell is everywhere a familiar sound. In the passing of a generation the railroad and the steamship have transformed the whole realm of commerce, of industry and of social life. They have enriched every occupation, given multiplied value to every pursuit, added incalculably to the means of human enjoyment, and made our vast wealth possible; they are at once the greatest achievement and the greatest necessity of modern civilization.