The dilemma that presented itself was unique. Its name was over-production. It occurred simultaneously in Great Britain, Germany, France and the United States. They all had the same goods to sell, the very same goods, rising from steel, and they sold them to each other in mad competition. Prices fell steadily for many years, continuously, until goods were preposterously cheap, and always there was a surplus still. Rails fell from $125 to $18 a ton, and the face of two continents was netted with railways. Yet there was a surplus of rails.
Never before in the history of mankind did goods increase faster than wants. It is not likely ever to happen again.
In a way that becomes clear with a little reflection, a surplus of steel caused a surplus of nearly everything else—food to begin with. There was a great surplus of food because steel rails opened suddenly to the world the virgin lands of the American west. The iron age had foreshortened time and distance. The steel age annihilated them.
It made no difference how far a thing was hauled. Transportation was cheap because steel was cheap. Kansas wheat was sold in Minneapolis, Chicago and in Liverpool. Minneapolis made flour and sent it to New York, Europe and back to Kansas.
The great availability of food released people from agriculture. They went to the industrial centers to make more steel and things rising of steel, so that there were more of such goods to sell.
More, more, more of everything.
Sell! Sell! Sell!
That was the voice of the steel age.
But we overrun the thread of the story. It lies still in the iron age.
How did John Breakspeare sell iron rails for Enoch?