ABSTRACT
T HE mechanical inventions which revolutionized indus-trial production in the eighteenth century producedeven more amazing results when applied to the improvement of transport facilities. In no respect, perhaps, does the present age more clearly surpass its predecessors than in the conquest of space. The ease and rapidity with which passengers and goods can now be moved over long distances would have appeared little short of miraculous to the men of two hundred years ago. In itself, this development is a notable human achievement, but it acquires an added importance when viewed in its reactions on the economic system as a whole. Every improvement in the means of transport causes an extension of the market and the extension of the market is the invariable prelude to sweeping economic changes. This is true in a special degree of the period we are considering. The Industrial Revolution, as we have seen, was due in the first instance to the opening up of new overseas markets, which was made possible by important discoveries in the art of navigation. And the movement of industrial change, once started, was carried on to fresh stages by further improvements in the means of transport, by the building of roads and canals, by the development of railways, and by the application of steam-power to navigation. It is this important branch of technical progress that forms the subject of the present chapter.
