(_c_) _Durability._--Durable objects and objects which can easily be brought within reach of modern means of rapid transport have a wide market. Perishable goods, as, for example, many fruits and vegetables, have for these reasons a narrow market. § 5. Modern machinery has in almost all cases raised the size of the market. The space-area of competition has been immensely widened, especially for the more durable classes of goods. It is machinery of transport--the transport of goods and news--that is chiefly responsible for this expansion. Cheaper, quicker, safer, and more calculable journeys have shrunk space for competing purposes. Improved means of rapid and reliable information about methods of production, markets, changes in price and trade have practically annihilated the element of distance. Machinery of manufacture as well as of transport has a levelling tendency which makes directly for expansion of the area of competition. As the spread of knowledge places each part of the industrial world more closely _en rapport_ with the rest, the newest and best methods of manufacture are more rapidly and effectively adopted. Thus in all production where less and less depends on the skill of the workers, and more and more upon the character of the machinery, every change which gives more prominence to the latter tends to equalise the cost of production in different countries, and thus to facilitate effective competition. § 6. Modern methods of production have also brought about a great expansion in the time-area of the market. Competition covers a wider range of time as well as of space. Production is no longer directed by the quantity and quality of present needs alone, but is more and more dependent upon calculation of future consumption. A larger proportion of the brain power of the business man is devoted to forecasting future conditions of the market, and a larger proportion of the mechanical and human labour to providing future goods to meet calculated demands. This expansion of the time-market, or growth of speculative production, is partly cause, partly effect of the improved mechanical appliances in manufacture and in transport. The multiplication of productive power under the new machinery has in many branches of industry far outstripped the requirements of present known consumption at remunerative prices, while increased knowledge of the widening market has given a basis of calculation which leads manufacturers to utilise their spare productive power in providing against future wants. So long as industry was limited by the labour of the human body, assisted but slightly by natural forces and working with simple tools, the output of productive energy could seldom outstrip the present demand for consumable goods.