OUR INLAND WATERWAYS 293 



years. So railway magnates and the masses began to see alike that the 

 congestion of freight was a general condition affecting every industry 

 and the entire country, and one not to be remedied by local and 

 temporary means. Thenceforward discussions and conventions took a 

 definite aim — and for the first time in our industrial history, railway 

 corporations, commercial organizations, producers, and consumers, all 

 united in a common movement for the common good. 



Seen large, our primary industries are production and distribution, 

 the latter effected by trade and transportation; and in 1906 it became 

 clear that production had so far outgrown transportation and trade 

 (including every phase of merchandising and banking and broking) 

 as to prevent the normal development of either — i. e., entire sections of 

 the country were confronted by the stern necessity of finding new and 

 more economical transportation facilities, or else ceasing to develop. 

 In fact while citizens and statesmen were seeking facilities and dis- 

 cussing the resumption of water traffic, settlement and production 

 actually stopped over scores of thousands of square miles in the 

 Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Washington, Oregon and California: nor 

 can it recommence, save perhaps feebly and sporadically, until trans- 

 portation is provided. For conditions are changing: In the first place, 

 human nature being as it is, the luxuries of yesterday are the necessi- 

 ties of to-day, so that the time of the independent and self-supporting 

 squatter family has passed, and that of the interdependent settlement 

 or community united on the joint basis of human sympathy and con- 

 venient currency has come in its stead. In the second place, water and 

 fuel are no longer mere redundancies if not obstructions to settlement, 

 but essentials to be gained only through collective action. In the third 

 place, the multiplication of communities necessarily involves a much 

 more rapid increase of lines of communication, in accordance with the 

 mathematical law of combination : two communities may be connected 

 by one line, while three communities require three lines ; four demand 

 six lines, five need 10 lines, six, 15 lines, eight, 28 lines, twelve, 66 

 lines; if the lines were not combined, the county seats of a state of 

 a hundred counties would require 4,950 lines of communication to 

 connect them, while the thousand towns of a section would require 

 49,950 lines — so that a reason for the breaking down of transportation 

 systems in a growing country is the inexorable physical law under 

 which the lines connecting communities increase in rapid ratio. Thus 

 the congestion of traffic in the land of magnificent distances forming 

 the interior and the west in 1906 was inevitable; production and trade 

 had simply outgrown transportation facilities; the railways failed be- 

 cause the marts were too far apart for their carrying capacity — and 

 the old-time packets were gone ! 



