TWENTY-EIGHTH ANNUAL MEETING 



79 



tion, that great commerce is a very im- 

 portant problem. 



Now, with Pittsburg at the head of the 

 Ohio River, what is the present condition 

 of the Ohio River? Our government un- 

 dertook to improve it is 1876, thirty-two 

 years ago, so as to give a navigable depth 

 of six feet at all periods of the year, by 

 means of a system of locks and dams. In 

 thirty-two years we have accomplished the 

 magnificent feat of completing one-tenth of 

 that project. Ought we not to be proud 

 of our efforts? One-tenth of the Ohio 

 River has been completed in thirty-two 

 years ! Now, several years ago. Congress 

 practically adopted a plan of deepening the 

 river to nine feet between Pittsburg and 

 Cairo, instead of six feet as originally in 

 tended. The engineers tell us that it will 

 cost $63,000,000 in addition to what has 

 been spent to properly improve this great 

 river by means of a system of locks and 

 dams, fifty-four in niimber, slack-water 

 navigation between the head and the mouth 

 of the river. 



I would like to submit this mathemat- 

 ical problem to this audience: If it takes 

 the greatest country on earth thirty-two 

 years to complete one-tenth of a project 

 for six feet of navigation on the Ohio 

 River, how long will it take that country 

 to complete nine feet of navigation? I 

 cannot say. I do not believe anybody in 

 this audience can work it out. Certainly 

 not until all of us will long since have 

 been gathered to our fathers, unless the 

 present system is changed. 



Now, is there a commerce on the river 

 worthy of the expenditure of $63,000,000? 

 Why, according to the reports of the En- 

 gineer Department, the commerce on that 

 river in the year 1906 was over thirteen 

 million tons. We have no official figures 

 to show the cost of carrying coal down 

 the river and down the Mississippi River 

 to New Orleans, but Major William L. Sei- 

 bert, one of the most accomplished mem- 

 bers of the Engineer Corps of the Army, 

 now a member of the Panama Canal Com- 

 mission, made an elaborate study of that 

 subject and said that in 1905, in the then 

 very unsatisfactory condition of the river, 

 when it was navigable for very uncertain 

 periods and only for a few months of the 

 year, coal could be carried from Pittsburg 

 to Louisville at .76 of one mill per ton 

 per mile, and from Louisville to New Or- 

 leans at .67 of one mill per ton per mile. 

 Bear in mind that in 1905 the railroads 

 charged 7.60 mills per ton per mile, so 

 that the average rates on the Ohio River 

 were, respectively, one-eleventh and one- 

 tenth of the railroad rate that year, on this 

 13,000,000 tons of commerce. 



Now, if there were 13,000,000 tons with 

 the river in that condition, how much would 

 there have been with the river properly im- 

 proved? I visited the city of Cincinnati 



three or four months ago and was told that 

 at that time there were only two feet of 

 water on the bar. It is literally the truth 

 that at periods of low water there are points 

 in that river which the boys and girls can 

 wade. Is not that a shame? Is not that a 

 disgrace, to think that a ri ^r like that should 

 have been so neglected, a river which is a 

 perfect bee-hive of i^^dustry, with over 

 100,000,000 tons of comij, erce every year gen- 

 erated at Pittsburg; wi '" cities like Cincin- 

 nati, Louisville, Evansv.,,^, Cairo, and many 

 others on its banks — a river which passes 

 tlirough the geographical center of this Re- 

 public, the center of population being very 

 near its banks, the center oi, manufacture 

 being very near its banks? And what is true 

 of the Ohio, my friends, is true of all the 

 other rivers. The Tennessee and Cumber- 

 land Rivers have been neglected in like man- 

 ner. The upper Mississippi above St. Louis 

 lias been similarly neglected. Steamboats 

 liave entirely left the Missouri. I had the 

 humiliating experience a few years ago, when 

 a member of the Rivers and Harbors Com- 

 mittee, of hearing it said that there was no 

 such river in this country as the Missouri 

 worthy of being improved. Legislation was 

 undertaken by the American Congress which 

 practically put that river off the map, and 

 for business purposes the men of Kansas 

 City, led by that splendid business man, Mr. 

 Lawrence M. Jones, at very considerable 

 personal sacrifice to themselves, placed a 

 steamboat line on the Missouri River between 

 Kansas City and St. Louis two years ago, in 

 order to do what? To demonstrate to the 

 American Congress that the Missouri River 

 still exists and can do business! 



I wish to give you one striking illustration 

 down in my own section of a comparison be- 

 tween rates by rail and water. For several 

 years the people who live on Trinity River 

 in Texas have been imploring the American 

 Congress to deepen that little river by means 

 of locks and dams, so as to give them cheap 

 transportation to the city of Dallas, the head 

 of their river. Dallas is one of the fine 

 cities of the southwest. Cotton is the prin- 

 cipal product of that section, and Dallas is 

 the basic point for about one and one-half 

 million bales of cotton every year. It costs 

 to get that cotton to Galveston, the nearest 

 seaport, about $3 per bale. Now, I live 

 on the banks of the Mississippi River about 

 300 miles from New Orleans, and Dallas is 

 about 300 miles from Galveston. Where I 

 Kve we can get cotton shipped to New Or- 

 leans sometimes at 50 cents per bale, some- 

 tiines at 75 cents per bale ; rarely, if ever, 

 more than $1 per bale ; so that the people 

 of Dallas have to pay three times as much 

 as we in Louisiana who happen to live on 

 the banks of the Mississippi River. Now, 

 these Dallas and Texas people generally said 

 to Congress : ' ' Give us $5,000,000 to improve 

 the Trinity River, and instead of shipping 

 our cotton; our cotton, which goes to the 



