In England the rise in productiveness of machinery is roughly estimated at 40 per cent. in the period 1850 to 1885, and there is no reason to suppose this is an excessive estimate. In the shipping industry, where more exact statistics are available, the advance is even greater. The diminution of manual labour required to do a given quantity of work in 1884 as compared with 1870 is put down at no less than 70 per cent., owing in large measure to the introduction and increased application of steam-hoisting machines and grain elevators, and the employment of steam power in steering, raising the sails and anchors, pumping, and discharging cargoes.[153] In the construction of ships enormous economies have taken place. A ship which in 1883 cost £24,000 can now be built for £14,000. In the working of vessels the economy of fuel, due to the introduction of compound-engines, has been very large. A ton of wheat can now be hauled by sea at less than a farthing per mile. Similarly with land haulage the economy of fuel has made immense reductions in cost. "In an experiment lately made on the London and North Western Railway, a compound locomotive dragged a ton of goods for one mile by the combustion of two ounces of coal."[154] The quickening of voyages by steam motor, and by the abandonment of the old Cape route in favour of the Suez Canal, enormously facilitated commerce. The last arrangement is calculated to have practically destroyed a tonnage of two millions. The still greater facilitation of intelligence by electricity did away with the vast system of warehousing required by the conditions of former commerce. These economies of the foundational transport industries have deeply affected the whole commerce and manufacture of the country, and have played no inconsiderable part in bringing about the general fall of prices by lowering the expenses of production and stimulating an increased output.
Excessive production of transport-machinery, especially of railways, has played an important part as an immediate cause of modern trade depression. The depression beginning in 1873 and culminating in 1878 is described as having its origin "in the excessive lock-up of capital in the construction of railways, especially in America and Germany, many of which, when built, had neither population to use them nor traffic to carry; in the wild speculation that followed the German assertion of supremacy on the Continent; in the exaggerated armaments, which withdrew an inordinate amount of labour from productive industry, and over-weighed the taxpayers of the great European nations; and in over-production in the principal trades in all European countries."[155]