OUR INLAND WATERWAYS 297 



It may conservatively be stated that the inadequacy of transportation 

 facilities is little less than alarming; that its continuation may place an arbi- 

 trary limit on the future productivity of the land; and that the solution of the 

 difficult financial and physical problems involved is worthy the most earnest 

 thought and effort of all who believe in the full development of our country and 

 the largest opportunity for its people. 



While we now have 26,200 miles of navigable rivers and some 2,800 

 miles of canals in operation (with nearly as much more inoperative 

 or abandoned) which during 1904 carried, respectively, 127,000,000 

 and 5,000,000 tons of freight, we have also 222,500 miles of railways 

 which during 1906 carried 1,631,374,219 tons — i. e., although the 

 United States has a more extensive and better distributed natural sys- 

 tem of inland waterways than any other country, and despite the fact 

 that water carriage costs on the average but a third or a fourth as 

 much as rail carriage, less than one ninth of our freight lines are 

 waterways, and only one twelfth of our commodities are carried by 

 water. And of our aggregate assets of say $107,000,000,000, our 

 steam railways have risen to some $16,000,000,000 or $18,000,000,000, 

 or nearly one sixth, which even at first sight seems out of proportion ; 

 and the disproportion becomes still more glaring when current pro- 

 duction is compared with railway earnings — the former in 1906 reach- 

 ing $7,000,000,000 to $10,000,000,000 (according to mode of estimate 

 of farm products) and the latter $2,325,765,167, or fully one fourth 

 as much. The case is clear; we are employing extravagant agencies 

 and paying exorbitant rates for transportation; the prices of our 

 staples depend too little on cost of production, too largely on cost of 

 carriage. 



The condition is not new, only grown worse yearly; it led largely 

 to the establishment of the Department of Commerce and Labor, and 

 wholly to the creation of some of its bureaus; it has led to legisla- 

 tion in several states, and thence to conflict between state and federal 

 authority in a number of cases; and above all else it has led to such 

 paralysis of settlement and production as to check the growth of 

 the country. In a dozen states the " oppressed and degraded state 

 of commerce " is not an idle phrase ; it denotes a condition now in- 

 tolerable, and soon to be suicidal unless relieved, and that by measures 

 both prompt and permanent. Our productions are ample and our 

 ports sufficient to maintain a beneficial balance of international trade; 

 yet products and ports were but a burden unless the one can be laid 

 down at the other at prices permitting interchange with the rest of 

 the world. Our Panama Canal is a gateway to the nations — yet of 

 what profit to us unless our exports can be delivered on the sea-board 

 at a competitive figure, i. e., at a reasonable increase on the cost of 

 production ? The time has come to inquire whether Boston, New York, 



