Excerpt from Dock Capital, Expenditure, Receipts and Management Although the principle of the dock was early applied, there was very small application of the dock system until the end of the eighteenth century, when the growth of commerce had reached such proportions that the natural form of the leading ports no longer afforded either safety or accommodation. The industrial revolution had begun, and the ports and harbors, if they were to maintain their position in harmony with the changed order of things, must change also. As types of the great industrial revo lution wrought by the application of steam power, we are in the habit of looking at the modern factory, employing an army of men and turning out products sufficient to supply a nation; to the enormous locomotives, and mammoth cargo steamers, and ocean greyhounds, which by their swiftness and capacity have made the East and West, the North and South, but as neighbors, each sharing in the special advantages of the other. There is. However, another factor which has been overlooked in the eulo gies, but which, nevertheless, has contributed much to this great industrial advance, and that is the dock. As the terminus of great ocean trunk lines or as the intermediate station on the entire route from the producer to the consumer, it holds a con trolling position of much economic importance. So extensive and varied are the interests which converge here that their scope becomes national in character. The government, the port city, the railways, the shipowner, the merchant, the producer, and the consumer all have interests here. So long as the ports remained undeveloped, there was no need of a complex system of business management. The lighting, buoying, piloting, and dredging of the fairway, although often starting as a private enterprise under charter of the government, have gradually been taken over by some public body directly. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.