“On whatever side we turn our eyes we see these accomplished results of the work of the last forty years. These results may not be always excellent from the financial point of view; many errors have been brought out, and by the side of some brilliant exceptions we must count a number of deceptions for the capitalists engaged, and for the governments which have become needy and insolvent. But, whatever may be the financial result, these lands have been stirred up and dug out; the blocks and the rails have been laid; the towns have been transformed; the distances have been shortened; the new apparatus has been given in profusion to the rich countries, in more reasonable limits to countries less open; everywhere what was strictly necessary has been done; often too much has been done.” Here, very clearly expressed, is the result of the forty years of activity which we have had, and this result is really the end toward which tended the great industrial movement that, for so long a time, has held minds awake, has kept the dockyards, the workshops, the factories, the forges at work. This end is attained; we see it; and among the serious consequences of this fact is one which M. De Laveleye exposes with his usual lucidity: “Thanks to the facilities of communication, to the new routes opened, to steam and to electricity, the conditions of commerce and industry are changed. There is no longer any place, as there was at the beginning of this century, for the boldness of the manufacturer or the trader, counting upon his skill as well as on his risk to obtain a large remuneration due to his audacity, to his special knowledge, and to his capital. “Between the new and the old commerce and industry there exists the same difference as between the wars of the empire and the last campaigns of France and of Austria. “The same causes have produced the same results. In war the cannon and guns of perfection, the railways and the telegraphs, the vast masses of men, have produced rapid campaigns, in which personal valor and the chances of war, going almost for nothing, contributed very little to the final result. In industry the same perfection of apparatus has changed the conditions of trade; and the masses of men are replaced by the abundance of circulating capital and the facility of the means of credit—two other products of this active period of forty years. “Only, in war the final result places the vanquished at the mercy of his foe, who can, as it appears, dictate his laws; in industry and in commerce the final gain is not left arbitrarily to the swiftest or to the best equipped. He must content himself with little; he is forbidden to abuse the victory which, without this moderation, will not be long in escaping him.”