The decline of canal traffic is almost the despair of economists in view of the remarkably low range of rates charged on the canals over this period. No better example of this movement could be given than that of the rates charged for the transportation of wheat from Chicago to New York. This is a through traffic, carried over 1000 miles, without breaking bulk by either system, and therefore under conditions exceedingly favourable to economical transport. In 1857, when the State of New York, by the mouths of its chief executive officers, was proposing to prohibit the railways from carrying heavy freight, and suggesting the imposition of tolls on railway traffic by way of assisting to keep the canals alive, the average rate charged for transporting a bushel of wheat over this long route was a fraction over 26 cents. In 1868 the canal system was charging 24½ cents, as against 42½ charged by the railway for the same service. Ten years later still, the lake and canal rate had fallen to 9·15 cents, and the railroad rate to 17·9 cents. In 1884 the former amounted to 6·60 and the latter to 13 cents.[116] Throughout the whole period the railway-borne wheat has paid almost twice as much as the water-borne. And yet the trade of the canals declines, while that of the railroads increases. This is an enigma for which we must now endeavour to find a solution. The United States differ from Great Britain, and from most other countries, in their economic circumstances. They have developed their trade with a rapidity that is perhaps unexampled in the annals of commerce. They have found such a demand for their produce, alike at home and abroad, that they have not had time to take heed of cheeseparing economies. The question with the agriculturists and the manufacturers alike has been to secure the largest possible deliveries in the shortest possible space of time. They found a practically unlimited market for their agricultural produce in Europe, at prices which, while they were working on a virgin soil, paid them sufficiently well. Of that price, transport was no doubt an important element. When the railways were receiving 30 to 40 cents per bushel for transporting wheat from Chicago to New York, the sellers were receiving 40_s._ to 50_s._ per quarter in London. The railway transport was therefore only one-fourth to one-fifth of the entire ultimate cost of the product. If the ocean transport cost 15_s._ more, the total cost of transport only absorbed about one-half of the price paid by the consumer, so that 25_s._ was left to the grower, minus other charges, and at much less than this price wheat could be profitably grown in the West. The difference between 24½ cents by canal and lake and 42½ by railway was not then of paramount importance. On the other hand the exporter had the supreme advantage of quicker deliveries, the absence of equal risk of having the material spoiled by damp, the certainty of being able