decade of extensive construction of railways. Before 1850 there was more
traffic by water than by rail. After 1860 the relative importance of
land and water transportation was reversed. Furthermore, the most
important railway building during the ten years preceding 1860 was the
construction of East and West trunk lines; and the sixties were marked
by the establishment of through lines for freight and the consolidation
of connecting lines. The through freight lines greatly hastened freight
traffic and by the consolidations through transportation became doubly
efficient.

Arteries of traffic had thus extended from the Eastern coast to the
Mississippi Valley. Local markets had widened to embrace half a
continent. Competitive menaces had become more serious and threatened
from a distance. Local unionism no longer sufficed. Consequently, as we
saw, in the labor movement of the sixties the national trade union was
supreme.

There were four distinct sets of causes which operated during the
sixties to bring about nationalization; two grew out of the changes in
transportation, already alluded to, and two were largely independent of
such changes.

The first and most far-reaching cause, as illustrated by the stove
molders, was the competition of the products of different localities
side by side in the same market. Stoves manufactured in Albany, New
York, were now displayed in St. Louis by the side of stoves made in
Detroit. No longer could the molder in Albany be indifferent to the fate
of his fellow craftsman in Louisville. With the molders the
nationalization of the organization was destined to proceed to its
utmost length. In order that union conditions should be maintained even