EUROPE AND AFRICA 
development of the multitude of rich and powerful corpora- 
tions both in this country and abroad during the last quarter 
of the nineteenth century. 
This astonishing increase in capital and industry was 
accompanied by an equally remarkable development in 
methods of production and transportation. Machinery 
replaced hand labor in the shop and on the farm, — on the 
latter to such an extent that in twenty years’ time 600 men 
were doing the work formerly requiring 2145. Steam, 
extensively employed in manufacturing only since 1865, has 
more than doubled man’s productive power, and electricity 
has increased it still more. The steamboat and the railway 
displaced the sailing-vessel and the horse, while at the same 
time the cost of transportation was greatly reduced. In 
1860 to 1870 wheat could hardly be moved 150 to 200 miles 
in Europe without losing its value. Now it can be trans- 
ported halfway round the world for a fraction of its price. 
Thus, through a wonderful material development in 
industry, capital, and transportation facilities, the way 
was prepared for a world-wide colonial expansion. In 
the political field, also, new movements were taking place. 
Governments were growing in resources, in wealth, in effec- 
tiveness, and in concentration of power. The France, which 
with dignity, firmness, and skill incorporated Tunis and 
entered with determined tread the jungles of the Sudan in 
the early eighties, was not the prostrate and divided nation 
of the seventies. The British lion, which with a calm force- 
fulness insisted upon its share of Africa in the eighties and 
nineties, was not the vacillating, meek creature of the sixties 
and seventies. The masterful, united Germany, backed by 
a Triple Alliance, interfering in Southwest Africa and Mo- 
rocco, was no longer the jealous group of mediocre states, 
cajoled into a union by the exigencies of war and the per- 
suasion of a Bismarck.