Too Long; Didn't Read

A man carrying a sack of coal over a plank laid from the wharf to the ship's side, a bricklayer's labourer moving slowly up a ladder with his hod of mortar—these illustrate the most primitive methods of shifting material from one spot to another. When the wheelbarrow is used in the one case, and a rope and pulley in the other, an advance has been made, but the effort is still great in proportion to the work accomplished; and were such processes universal in the great industries connected with mining and manufacture, the labour bill would be ruinous. The development of methods of transportation has gone on simultaneously with the improvement of machinery of all kinds. To be successful, an industry must be conducted economically throughout. Thus, to follow the history of wheat from the time that it is selected for sowing till it forms a loaf, we see it mechanically placed in the ground, mechanically reaped, threshed, and dressed, mechanically hauled to the elevator, mechanically transferred to the bins of the same, mechanically shot into trucks or a ship, mechanically raised into a flour-mill, where it is cleaned, ground, weighed, packed, and trucked by machinery, mechanically mixed with yeast and baked, and possibly distributed by mechanically operated vehicles. As a result we get a 2-lb. loaf for less than three-pence. Anyone who thinks that the price is regulated merely by the amount of wheat grown is greatly mistaken, for the cheapness of handling and transportation conduces at least equally to the cheapness of the finished article.