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it since time began.
Ancient Egypt, Babylon, Greece and the Roman Empire have all been experiments in transportation. The very existence of this nation as we know it, is due to improved transportation. The United States would, long before now, have disintegrated into isolated fragments had it not been for the railroad. Every nation of Europe today is an experiment in nationality through water-borne commerce. The geographical aspect of most European countries is such that they have been endowed with an ease of water communication  which has not been our heritage.  The contour of Europe is such that civilization has sprung up on its outstretched fingers of land and grown to strength, prosperity and union on waterway transportation.  Russia alone resembles the United States in physical characteristics and the collapse of nation all life and the persistence of famine in Russia is largely due to the lack of operating railroads. Here, as in Russia, there has been a continuous struggle with great distances, by land. Our national integrity , our civilization is inextricably bound up with the success of communication systems. The ox cart, the prairie schooner, rail-road and automobile have each in turn led the vanguard of civilization in America and nod the aeroplane is beginning to give tangible evidence that another conspicuous epoch of transportation is opening.  The aeroplane matching the  flights of the hours with a winged mechanism will carry the city into the country and the country into the city,  releasing millions form the slavery of dwelling in remote places and giving them the freedom of the unending illimitable high way of the sky, broadening the progress of commerce and industry.