8o 



CONSERVATION 



marts of the world ; our cotton, which an- 

 nually pours into the hands of the Amer- 

 ican people more money than any other ar- 

 ticle of export — hundreds of millions of 

 dollars coming in from the outside world to 

 us every year as the purchase money of our 

 cotton — instead of shipping our cotton by 

 rail and paying exorbitant rates, we will be 

 enabled to ship by water at reasonable 

 rates." All of us, all of you who are before 

 me now, use cotton. It enters into the every- 

 day life of every man, woman, and child in 

 the Republic, and that Texas cotton has to 

 pay $2 a bale to the railroads more than 

 it would have had to pay if Congress had 

 been willing to spend the pitiful sum of 

 $5,000,000 properly to improve that river. 



See what a splendid investment it would 

 have been. A saving of $2 a bale on 

 1,500,000 bales, a saving direct and immediate 

 of almost $3,000,000 on one article alone. 

 But is that all ? No, my friends ; it is an 

 axiom of political economy that the products 

 returning into an agricultural section, bought 

 with the crop of the agricultural section, 

 costs fully twice as much as it does to market 

 the agricultural product; so if there was a 

 saving of $3,000,000 on the outgoing cotton 

 there would be a saving of fully $6,000,000 

 on the returning product — and that expendi- 

 ture of $5,000,000 by Congress on the Trinity 

 River would have saved the people of Texas 

 and, therefore, the people of the whole United 

 Staets, fully $6,000,000. 



I do not want to bore you too much with 

 details of this kind, but I must give you a 

 few illustrations in order that you may un- 

 derstand the policy of the American Con- 

 gress in this respect and may understand 

 whether it has been necessary for organiza- 

 tions similar to the National River and Har- 

 bors Congress. I want to give you one more 

 illustration closer at home. I do not want to 

 convey the impression that the West and 

 South have been badly treated and the people 

 in the East have been well treated in regard 

 to their waterways. That is not so. In 

 1873, Congress undertook to improve the 

 Harlem River in the city of New York, 

 within the very shadow of Wall Street, so as 

 to give it a depth of fifteen feet, with a 

 width of 250 feet, the estimated cost being 

 $3,700,000. In the thirty years that have 

 elapsed since that project was begun, just 

 exactly one-half of the appropriation has 

 been made and the work is about one-half 

 completed. Think of that ! On the Harlem 

 River, which the year before last — I have not 

 the figures for 1908 — had a commerce of 

 10,000,000 tons, valued at $270,000,000, in 

 thirty years, Congress, pursuing the niggard 

 policy which it has always pursued toward 

 our inland waterways, has appropriated only 

 one-half of the money necessary to finish 

 this great work. Can you understand it? I 

 cannot, and I call upon you, my friends, tc 

 aid us in having a proper, comprehensive, 

 businesslike policy adopted toward our 



waterways. I promise you in return, as on'» 

 member of the waterways crowd, to do all 

 I can to help forestrj% because I believe 

 the forest and water are twin brothers. They 

 must stand or fall together. 



I wish to say that in this great Republic of 

 ours nearly all questions are political; but, 

 thank God, this waterway question, like the 

 forestry question, is not a political one. The 

 last platforms of both the two great political 

 parties of this country declared in the plainest 

 and strongest language in favor of a busi- 

 nesslike policy toward these waterways. Let 

 me read to you very briefly from those 

 platforms. 



That of the Republican party, adopted in 

 Chicago, says : 



' ' We indorse the movement inaugurated 

 by the administration for the conservation of 

 natural resources. We approve all measures 

 to prevent the waste of timber. We com- 

 mend the work now going on for the recla- 

 mation of arid lands and reaffirm the Repub- 

 lican policy of the free distribution of avail- 

 able areas of the public domain to the land- 

 less settler. No obligation of the future is 

 more insistent and none will result in greater 

 blessings to posterity. In line with this 

 splendid undertaking is the further duty 

 equally imperative to enter upon a system- 

 atic improvement, upon a large and compre- 

 hensive plan, just to all portions of the 

 country, of the waterways, harbors, and 

 great lakes whose natural adaptability to the 

 increasing traffic of the land is one of the 

 greatest gifts of a benign Providence. ' ' 



And the Democratic platform says : 



"Water furnishes the cheapest means of 

 transportation, and the National Government, 

 having control of navigable waterways, 

 should improve them to their fullest capacity. 

 We earnestly favor the immediate adoption 

 of a liberal and comprehensive plan for im- 

 proving every watercourse in the Union 

 which is justified by the needs of com- 

 merce, and to secure that end we favor, when 

 practicable, the connection of the Great Lakes 

 with navigable rivers and the Gulf through 

 the Mississippi River, and the navigable 

 rivers with each other, and the rivers, bays 

 and sounds of our coast with each other 

 by artificial canals, with a view to perfecting 

 a system of inland waterways to be navi- 

 gated by vessels of standard draft. We favoi 

 the coordination of the various services of 

 the Government connected with waterways 

 in one service for the purpose of aiding in 

 the completion of such a system of inland 

 waterways ; and we favor the creation of a 

 fund ample for continuous work which shall 

 be conducted under the direction of a com- 

 mission of experts to be authorized by law." 



In accordance with the platforms of their 

 respective parties, I had the pleasure of wit- 

 nessing at the great Waterways Convention 

 in the city of Chicago Mr. Taft and Mr. 

 Bryan assembled there in a spirit of broth- 

 erly love and the broadest statesmanship, 



