Progress Through Travel; P.L. Poirot

In a sense, these internal bar riers are by far the most difficult for man to span, for he may not realize they are barriers or sus pect there could be something be yond. How could there be anything beyond the ocean if the earth were fiat? Or anything desirable beyond a great wall or an iron curtain if no outside goods or services or ideas were allowed to penetrate? Fear of the unknown can effec tively halt man's search for knowl edge. An ocean or river or fence or wall affords protection and security of a sort he will abandon with great reluctance, if at all. Wild animals, once domesticated, lose the ability to shift for themselves and the curiosity to explore be yond the fence; and man, long im201 202 THE FREEMAN April prisoned, comes to welcome his walls and chains. The Great Civilizer The story of civilization, how ever, is the story of man emerg ing from his shell, thinking, forc ing, working, winning his way over or under or around or through the barriers and fences he encounters. The story includes a running history of travel, the odysseys of man, the wanderings of Abraham and Lot, the journeys of Marco Polo, the voyages of the Phoenicians and Vikings and Co lumbus and Cabot, the Crusades, the Pilgrims, the Lewis and Clark expedition, the development of commercial aviation. So much of the story of human progress is ex pressed in the improvements in transportation growing out of man's need to travel-the horse, the wheel, the cart, the boat, the sail, the rail, the piston motor, the wing, the jet.

Man's need to travel! Necessity takes many forms and mothers many things. The need sometimes is literally for green pastures, a watering hole, raw materials, liv ing room. Others travel in search of beauty, understanding, great ideas, truth - perhaps a sense of mission and responsibility toward fellow men. Some need to travel back through time, to discover and decipher and understand the wisdom of the ancients, in books and lost records and buried bones and artifacts. And some would go where man has never been before. Where man has been before and staked his claim, .not always are travelers welcome. To cross a fence may be to trespass. Many of the chapters in the book of civili zation have been written in the blood of conquistadors and cru saders and the victims of their invasion. Nor have we seen an end to such mass migrations and wars of conquest. Without con doning the methods of coercion, it may be acknowledged that in vaders and defenders sometimes have learned from one another, hopefully found ways to live more abundantly together and in peace.

But as long as some men travel to conquer, others will try harder to build and hide behind protec tive barriers. It must be doubted that ultimate human progress is to· be thus achieved. The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith, less than two cen turies ago, pioneered in setting forth in orderly fashion what some others had learned through trial and error about the wealth of na tions. There had been travel and trade of sorts through the cen turies. Marco Polo might be de scribed as a traveling salesman. Camel caravans connected far1968 PROGRESS THROUGH TRAVEL 203 flung communities through trade. The Phoenicians were active trad ers in Mediterranean waters. The Roman Empire was in· part a trad ing area. There were the mer chants of Venice and Florence. New trade routes opened in the wake of the Crusades. Columbus was seeking a better route to the spices of India. The mercantilists were traders in a protected mar ket system. But it remained for Adam Smith to begin the explana tion of the advantages of speciali zation and trade that men some times had practiced without full understanding. The wealth of na tions, and of individuals, he per ceived, is not so much something that exists - something hoarded or held in inventory - but an on going process of exchange among willing buyers and sellers free to travel with their ideas and their wares.

Other scholars studied and elab orated upon and refined the ra tionale for private ownership and control and free trade in a mar ket open to all peaceful competi tors. Eventually, some began to understand that when exchange is voluntary, both parties gain some thing from the transaction. Then they could know that it is not necessary to rob or enslave others in order to accumulate personal wealth. On the contrary, the far better way to serve one's own interests is to more efficiently serve the interests of others and reap the rewards they will freely offer. Freedom in America Could it have been entirely co incidence that the year 1776, when Adam Smith's great book first ap peared, also marked the beginning of a new idea about wars and gov ernments? The American Revolu tion was a war for independence rather than for conquest, and the limited form of government that developed in the young republic was designed primarily to. keep the peace among men who other wise would be free to produce goods and services and to trade and travel as they pleased and could afford.