From such rapidly spreading exploration and colonization there necessarily arose new wants, new products, new manufactures, and rapidly increasing trade; interrupted more or less by wars, but in the main marching steadily and rapidly on. The present century has witnessed an extension of the commercial relations of mankind to which there is no parallel in history. In 1810, the first steam-vessel crossed the Atlantic ocean, from Charleston, S. C., to and a similar adventure from England to India was accomplished in 1825. The application of steam to transportation and manufac turing immensely enlarged the capacity and needs of commerce. Another astonishing impulse to trade came with the discovery of gold in California and Australia. The two events were almost coincident, and came when a general extension of trade had already been ten years in progress. The first effect was to produce a great emigration to the regions in which the gold-fields were situated, and this was followed by large exports of goods to the same quarters, which, as usually happens when business falls out of the ordinary mercantile course, was much overdone, and ended in heavy loss to many ship pers. Abundance of labor had been supplied with unwonted celerity to the gold-fields, and as the labor was not unremunerative, and in many cases was rewarded by large findings of gold, the commotion in emigration, shipping, and traffic was 4ustained for a number of years. The coffers of the great banks were filled with new supplies of gold, and this imparted confidence to banking operations by which the money was soon dis tributed. All this was calculated to give additional impulse and extension to the com mercial forces already in motion ; there was an increased demand for goods; much labor had been transferred from old seats of industry to new fields, and there was rise of wages as well as of prices. The California and Australia mines remain productive, though in a reduced degree, and their most permanent effect on C. will be found in the fact that they helped to build California into a populous and prosperous state, and to make the Australian colonies a growing empire.
Great as has been the effect of these gold discoveries upon C., they sink into comparative insignificance before an influence already alluded to, and that is steam. There is little use to descant upon steamships and railways, and the later important agency of the telegraph, all equally marvelous in their power of facilitating C., and in the rapidity of their construction to this end. In 1839, the ocean steamers of the world might have been counted on the fingers of one hand. To-day, all the great mari time states have lines and fleets of sea-going steamers, enormous for bulk and power, threading the great rivers, cleaving every sea, and gulf, and strait, and going and com ing from every considerable port on the earth. Great Britain alone has more than 1600
such steamships employed wholly in foreign trade. No one knew until 1825 that goods and persons could be hauled over the land by steam. In this year, 1880, there are in the United States alone, 85,000 in. of railroads in operation, built at a cost of $4,762, 000,000. The rapid development of the telegraph is more wonderful in an age of won ders than that of steam. It was in May, 1844, that the first line of magnetic telegraph (Morse's) was used in this country, between Washington and Baltimore, about 40 miles. There are now almost 100,000 m. of line and over 220,000 m. of wire in the United States alone, not including railroad telegraphs. Continents and nations are linked by submarine cables, and it is actually easier to-day for a merchant to send an order to and receive an answer from Calcutta than it was 40 years ago to achieve the same feat between New York and Brooklyn. Still another modern improvement—made possible by the telegraph—has a beneficial effect upon C.; and that is the weather service estab lished in the. United States, Great Britain, and some other European countries. There can be no doubt that C. by sea has been 'rendered much more secure by the knowledge of the state of the weather at a distance, and the probabilities of what it is likely to be in any given place, now published in all centers of trade.
By these inventions and in the natural course of progress, C. has acquired a security and extension in all its essential conditions, of which it was void in any previous age. It can never again exhibit the wandering course from route to route, and from one soli tary center to another, which is so characteristic of its ancient history, because it is established in every quarter of the globe, and all the seas and ways are open to it on terms fair and equal to every nation. Wherever there are population, industry, resource, art, and skill, there will be international trade. C. will have many centers, and one may relatively rise or fall; but such decay and ruin as have smitten many once proud seats of wealth into dust, cannot tpin occur without such catastrophes of war, violence, and disorder, as the growing civilization and reason of mankind, and the power of law, right, and common interest forbid us to anticipate. [Portions of this article are, with modifications, from .Eneylopcctlia Britannica, 9th edition.]