580 CIVIL ENGINEERING 



the nearest practicable point, thus substituting the short for the long 

 haul, in some cases. In others, where bulky freight, like ore, coal, 

 or grain is handled, great improvements have been introduced so 

 that the entire contents of each car may be dumped through chutes 

 into the hold of the vessel in one operation. The capacity of the 

 car has also been increased so that instead of the paying load being 

 less than the weight of its carrier, it is now about three times 

 greater. Probably the greatest advance in economic transporta- 

 tion ever effected was that which has revolutionized the move- 

 ment of petroleum from the oil-wells of Pennsylvania to tidewater. 

 This product was formerly handled by the trunk-line railroads in 

 specially constructed tank-cars, required to return empty, thus 

 reducing the live load to about 25 per cent of the total for the round 

 trip and costing forty cents per barrel for the freight. To control 

 the market and limit the output a combination was effected 

 amongst the common carriers, which made it impossible for inde- 

 pendent producers to market their oil. 



In this extremity, carte blanche was given to an experienced 

 engineer, 1 in 1878, to secure a continuous right-of-way, in fee, 

 across the states of Pennsylvania and Maryland and to construct 

 a pipe-line to the seaboard, without the exercise of the right of 

 eminent domain and in the face of a most determined and well- 

 organized opposition. By tact, energy, and strategy, this was suc- 

 cessfully accomplished in a remarkably short time, and by the use 

 of the principle of the hydraulic gradient and the mutually auto- 

 matic regulation of the pumping-plants, of which only four were 

 required, the cost of tlus movement was reduced ninety per cent 

 and the cordon was broken, to the great relief of both producer 

 and consumer. After which demonstration, general pipe-line laws 

 were adopted and other lines constructed so that the tank-car is 

 now almost a relic of the past. Thus the oppression of a trust has 

 operated to effect an economy which has reacted upon it for its 

 own greater emoluments as well as for the public benefit. 



The engorgement which has resulted in railroad centres from 

 the concentration of freight at certain seasons may be partially 

 relieved by so improving the feeders and outlets of all the avenues 

 of transportation as to distribute the movement more uniformly 

 over a longer period by the improvement of the common roads to 

 make them available at all seasons, with the expenditure of less 

 power and also of the internal waterways of the country, that they 

 may be utilized to relieve the traffic by distributing raw materials 

 which will not bear a long rail-haul. Moreover, the bars which 

 obstruct all harbor inlets along alluvial coasts constitute a serious 

 obstacle to the general distribution of commerce by requiring ves- 



1 General Herman Haupt. 



