THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER PROBLEM 15 



The logical solution of all the difficulties lies clearly enough in 

 the utilization of the great arterial system of waterways afforded by 

 the Mississippi and its tributaries. The time was when these rivers 

 were the life currents of the region. In the days when river craft plied 

 the Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio are found the conditions which 

 gave birth to, and stimulated the growth of, St. Louis, Cincinnati, 

 Louisville, Memphis, St. Joseph, Kansas City, Omaha and a host of 

 other river cities of all sizes. To-day these cities are railroad centers, 

 but by that very fact of having ready-made terminals the development 

 of the water route takes on added value. Take, for example, St. Paul 

 and Minneapolis, at the head of navigation on the Upper Mississippi, 

 the greatest flour-milling centers in the world, shippers of hundreds 

 of thousands of tons for both home and foreign markets and at the same 

 time the logical railroad centers for a large section of our own north- 

 west and Canada. Kansas City, almost in the geographical center of 

 the country and undoubtedly destined to become one of the greatest 

 inland cities of the continent, with St. Joseph, Omaha and Sioux City, 

 all lie in the range of former navigation on the Missouri and stand as 

 important shipping centers for the great corn, wheat and cattle trade 

 of the country back of them. The vast quantities of products handled 

 at these places are mainly bulky goods which do not suffer seriously 

 from relatively slow transit, but which do need most urgently the 

 means of getting to market at the lowest possible transportation charge. 

 No better illustration of the advantage of shipment by water can be 

 found than that afforded by the coal trade from Pittsburg to points 

 on the Mississippi. Coal can be sent from Pittsburg to New Orleans 

 by river, 2,000 miles, for about 75 cents a ton, while the rate by rail 

 to Memphis, 807 miles, is over $3 per ton. On the basis of the charge 

 per ton per mile, the latter rate is about ten times as heavy as the 

 former, a fact which becomes strikingly significant when it is consid- 

 ered that a saving of a single mill per ton mile means $1,000 saved 

 on every shipment of 1,000 tons going 1,000 miles. A similar saving 

 on a comparatively small part of the annual cereal crop alone in those 

 states bordering the Mississippi system would very soon reach a total 

 surprisingly close to the entire cost of improving the navigation. 



A waterway with a depth of fourteen feet from New Orleans to 

 Chicago, with channels of less depth in the Ohio and Missouri, would 

 almost unquestionably solve the problem of traffic congestion and high 

 freight rates for a great area of the productive west. It would be a 

 movement directly in line with the policies of various European 

 nations, where far less valuable waterways in thickly settled districts 

 have been utilized most profitably. It is an enterprise which the 

 United States must inevitably undertake sooner or later as the density 

 of population increases throughout the Mississippi Valley. Kailroads, 



