_Transportation in production._--The change of place necessary to bring together wants and those things which satisfy them is a method of producing wealth most apparent everywhere. The bringing of wild fruits from the forest or the swamp to the home gives them worth. The mere transportation, change of place, gives them an importance they did not have on the trees or bushes. In this transportation we put the energy necessary to take grain from the fields all the way to the bake-ovens, and finally to our mouths, or to carry the milk from the stable or yard in pail, can, wagon, train, delivery cart and bottle, to the lips of the child whose life it maintains. Every kind of material or force expended in this process of overcoming space is used in the idea that the object is worth the expenditure in the place finally reached. If the motion stops anywhere along the way, the wealth is not obtained, or at least is held only in expectation until the motion can be completed. While each of fifty individuals may give a hand, and pass his claim to the next for a consideration, the wealth is all the way increasing in anticipation, as the object comes nearer its use.
In this progress time as well as space is an important obstacle to be overcome, and we employ all means of increasing speed, or preserving against what we call "the ravages of time," i. e., the operation of injurious forces acting in time upon most material substances. The methods employed for storing, curing and forcing to maturity the various forms of food needed in a community are aimed at meeting this obstacle, and add to its final worth; indeed these may be the means of giving value to all the other efforts in transportation, as in moving beef from Kansas City to New York, or fresh fruit from San Francisco to Boston.
In the same process of putting things where they are needed, all merchants are engaged. Without the store, the order upon the shelves, the ready attendant and his despatch in meeting your demand, the pounds of sugar or salt essential to your comfort could not be had for love or money. These efforts are an essential part in the motion between wants and objects to satisfy them. Much of this kind of motion we include under the name commerce, though that word more directly implies the exchanges involved. The machinery of commerce is chiefly the means of bringing things wanted to the people who want them.