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436 and the markets of the Western world, permitting the dealers and consumers of the latter to adjust to a nicety their supplies of commodities to varying demands, and with the reduction of the time of the voyage to thirty days or less, there was no longer any necessity of laying up great stores of Eastern commodities in Europe; and with the termination of this necessity, the India warehouse and distribution system of England, with all the labor and all the capital and banking incident to it, substantially passed away. Europe, and to some extent the United States, ceased to go to England for such supplies. If Austria wanted anything of Indian product, it stopped en route, by the Suez Canal, at Trieste; if Italy, at Venice or Genoa; if France, at Marseilles; if Spain, at Cadiz. As a rule, also, stocks of Indian produce are now kept, not only in the countries, but at the very localities of their production, and are there drawn upon as they are wanted for immediate consumption, with a greatly reduced employment of the former numerous and expensive intermediate agencies. Thus, a Calcutta merchant or commission agent at any of the world's great centers of commerce contracts through a clerk and the telegraph with a manufacturer in any country—it may be half round the globe removed—to sell him jute, cotton, hides, spices, cutch, linseed, or other like India produce. An inevitable steamer is sure to be in an Eastern port, ready to sail upon short notice; the merchandise wanted is bought by