In Europe the necessity for trans-shipment is one reason why Britain surpasses most of continental Europe in transoceanic commerce. Since all foreign imports must be loaded upon ships, even if only to cross the English Channel, the extra cost of bringing goods across the ocean often adds relatively little to their cost. On the continent the use of different railroad gauges causes a vexatious trans-shipment problem at some international boundaries. Russia has a gauge of 5 feet and Spain and Portugal of 5 feet 51 inches. The other European countries generally use the standard gauge of 4 feet 8-1' inches, although some French and other lines have a 4 foot 9 inch gauge. Originally many European countries deliberately adopted unusual gauges in order to make invasion difficult in time of war.
In the United States one of the greatest trans-shipment problems arises from the fact that the heart of New York City is located on the island of Manhattan. This has much to do with the fact that over 10,000 harbor-craft, lighters, and ferry boats are employed in New York harbor. A projected tunnel under the Hudson River for motor traffic will help the present railroad tunnels, but New York will still have serious trans-shipment difficulties.
b (5) Resources and the newer parts of the world, especially in the western States, many railroads were built through regions with almost no population. Their purpose was to connect centers of population with regions where agricultural possi bilities or mineral ores promised wealth provided there were trans portation. Such railroads usually penetrate territory where an active population can live permanently, as in Kansas and along the Canadian Pacific, and hence are a permanent success. Other examples are many little lines built to open up coffee or fruit regions in Central America. Occasionally such railroads penetrate territory where the resources are soon exhausted. In Maine some logging railroads have been abandoned, as have several little mining lines in the Rocky Mountain States. Such railroads become of lasting importance only where the new region can support a permanently active and numerous population.
The Evolution of Transportation.—(1) How Transportation Systems Have Become Adapted to Special Uses.—The invention of new methods of transportation tends toward four results, (1) greater specialization and limitation, (2) greater power, speed, endurance, and load-carrying capacity, (3) greater danger, and (4) a greater demand for high mental ability. The invention of special modes of transportation to meet special needs has led not only to railways, steamships, automobiles, trolley cars, and airplanes, but to cash carriers, elevators, dredges, and pneumatic chutes for .mail. It has produced traveling cranes for huge pieces of machinery, special tank cars for oil, steamships designed solely for ore or coal, trucks for furniture. Man has also devised ways of traveling not only on the land and on the water, but under the ground in tunnels, under the water in submarines, and in the air in airplanes. Indeed, whatever one may want to carry, or wherever one may want to go, there is usually some special method. Specialization, however, means also limitation. No one of the modern means of trans
portation is so able to go everywhere and carry every kind of article as the horse. When a great city in the climate of Philadelphia is blanketed with heavy snow almost everyone would be glad if the city's specialized truck transportation were replaced temporarily by horses. In fact, one of the greatest problems of modern transportation is that our best modern means of conveyance are almost useless except when their roads or tracks are very carefully made and tended.
(2) Greater Speed, Endurance and Load Capacity.—The most notable combination of speed, endurance and carrying capacity is the great ocean liner which can carry 30,000 tons of cargo beside 3000 passengers at the rate of 25 miles an hour for 10,000 miles without stopping. Suppose the same load were carried an equal distance by land on men's backs, each man carrying 100 pounds and walking 20 miles a day. The 3000 passengers on the steamship could do the work \ in 270 years without interruption for Sundays and holidays. Yet 500 men could handle such a ship if she carried only freight. The work of each man in the crew results in as much transportation as would the work of 21,600 men carrying loads on their hacks.
(3) Greater Danger.—Each new type of transportation and each improvement in speed brings new dangers to life and limb. During recent years in the United States the number of accidents due to trans portation has increased ominously. For example, for every hundred thousand people in the United States the following numbers were injured on railroads in each of several years: Automobile accidents have increased so fast that the total number o deaths due to them in the registration area of the United States has risen as follows: In 1921 the number for the whole United States rose to about 15,000, or about one death every half hour; and perhaps twenty times as many people were injured. In 1920 the number of fatal accidents due to all forms of transportation in the registration area of the United States was as follows: Automobiles 9103 Railroads 8491 Street cars 2326 Other vehicles (chiefly horse-drawn) 2198 In proportion to the number of people who use airplanes, that mode of transportation probably causes far more deaths than any other. If the number of injuries in other kinds of accidents bears the same relation to deaths as in railroad accidents, the use of modern transportation facilities in the United States now causes an injury of some sort to one person in every 200 each year. Since the average lifetime is now about 36 years, and the number of accidents is increasing the chances are that at least one person in every 5 of those now living will at some time be injured in a transportation accident. Such injuries have a great effect on business because nothing makes more trouble than the sudden inability or death of trusted workers. In automobile and airplane accidents the conditions are particularly bad because a large share of those who arc killed are children and young people, often with more than the average boldness, initiative and vigor. A recent investigation shows that 54 per cent of the deaths from automobile accidents occurred among children under 15 years of age.