“In Italy, in Spain, the great arteries are provided with iron roads, and the products of their working are notoriously below what one could reckon as remuneration upon the capital. The seaports, the mines, are sufficiently provided for in these countries; the towns, there as elsewhere, have their markets, their water and gas works, their new quarters, their tramways.
“As for the Pyrenees, they are crossed; the Alps also; and after the tunnel already made by Mont Cenis toward France, the road in construction through Saint-Gothard toward Germany, and the very sufficient pass through the Brenner toward Austria, industrial activity will no longer find any occupation in this quarter.
“In Russia the principal railroad lines are completed.
“The railway system of Prussia is finished, and in that country industry is so well furnished that she is murdered with her own tools; the means of production and of transportation are too vast, and in evident disproportion to the possible business of the country.
“Austria is supplied, and there it would be rash to go further.
“Turkey has railroads. It has been difficult enough to construct them; one does not speak of them willingly.
“The United States have borrowed enough from us to establish their system; it is compact and well provided with lines, even opposition lines. That country has regained its lost time; it is necessary to watch its steps now that it is furnished sufficiently to put itself in competition with the industry of Western Europe.
“The Isthmus of Suez is opened.
“The transatlantic cables are laid.
“The transformation in the merchant marine is three-fourths completed; the sailing ship has disappeared, or at least is relegated to the second place; the steamers have the principal trade.