TWENTY-EIGHTH ANNUAL MEETING 



8i 



standing on the same platform in the greatest 

 friendship, advocating in the plainest lan- 

 guage the same great poHcy of waterway im- 

 provements, forgettitng all the rancor of poli- 

 tics for a day, and pledging themselves and 

 the parties which they represented to this 

 broad, liberal, comprehensive policy of im- 

 proving every deserving waterway in the 

 land. 



I read during the last session of the 

 American Congress no less than three mes- 

 sages of Mr. Roosevelt on this subject — Mr. 

 Roosevelt, who, I wish to say, has been one 

 of the most constructive and broad-minded 

 men who ever occupied the White House. 

 He has grasped this great business question 

 as he grasped that great question of irrigat- 

 ing the arid lands of the West and of con- 

 structing the Panama Canal. He sees how im- 

 portant it is to us as business people. He sees 

 how beneficial it will be to us, and he wants 

 to see the work carried on in a business- 

 like way instead of the desultory, unbusiness- 

 like manner we have pursued in the past, 

 which I have illustrated to you in the cases 

 of the Harlem River, the Ohio River, and 

 the Trinity River, and which I could illus- 

 trate, if I had time, by a hundred other cases. 



Now, my friends, many of you, 1 know, 

 are interested as shippers of lumber. Lumber 

 is a very bulky, heavy product, a product 

 which requires cheap transportation. I say 

 to you, without fear of successful contradic- 

 tion, that just as the waterways of the Great 

 Lakes and the Ohio River carry freight at 

 one-ninth, one-tenth, and one-eleventh of the 

 average railroad rate, so, if you will develop, 

 as they can be developed, as they should 

 be developed, and as I believe some day 

 they will be developed, the great inter- 

 nal waterways of this nation, you will find 

 freight carried at rates not exceeding one- 

 sixth of the average railroad rate. Now, 

 certainly, that would be beneficial to every 

 man, woman and child in this Union, for all 

 of us are interested in transportation. Trans- 

 portation enters into the daily life of every 

 one of us, and anything that will cheapen 

 the grain that makes our flour, anything 

 that will cheapen the iron and steel that we 

 use; anything that will cheapen the lumber 

 that goes into the house that covers us, will 

 benefit us, and we should take an interest 

 in it. 



I have heard it said that Germany is one 

 of the most advanced countries on this globe 

 in the preservation of its forests. I believe 

 it is conceded that the Germans are a wise, 

 far-seeing people. Let me say to you that 

 not only does Germany protect its forests, 

 but it protects and develops its waterways. 



In Germany, according to Mr. O. L. 

 Sparker, it costs, to carry freight on the Elbe, 

 3.3 mills per ton per mile; on the Oder, 2.5 

 mills per ton per mile ; on the Rhine, 1.8 

 mills per ton per mile; the average being 

 about 2.25 mills per ton per mile, as com- 

 pared with our rate of .8 of one mill over 

 the Great Lakes. 



But here our railroads carry freight at 

 about 7.2 mills, and in Germany in 1905, 

 the time these figures were given for, the 

 Germans' rail rate was 11.7 mills, so that the 

 average water rate there was about one-fifth 

 of the average rail rate. All the waterways 

 of Germany have been as fully developed as 

 possible. Berlin, which, as you know, is an 

 interior city, is connected by canals with 

 every part of the Empire, and such splendid 

 canals run to the sea that to all intents and 

 purposes it is a seaport. Between Antwerp 

 and Paris there are seven distinct water 

 routes. The French, the Hollanders, the 

 Belgians, as well as the Germans, have seen 

 the benefit of water transportation. So thor- 

 oughly have they developed their waterways 

 that it is said you can load a barge in any 

 part of either of those four countries and 

 carry it to every other part without breaking 

 bulk, at water rates about one-fifth of the 

 average railroad rate. 



Has that driven the railroads out of busi- 

 ness? No! The waterways carry the low- 

 class heavy bulk freight, such as coal, ore, 

 lumber, farm products, iron and steel, and 

 the manufactures thereof; the railroads carry 

 passengers and the higher class products 

 which will stand a higher freight rate. They 

 have all prospered, audit is a well-established 

 fact that along, the banks of the Rhine and 

 the Oder and the Elbe and other rivers in 

 Germany, railroads are paying a better inter- 

 est charge than the roads of the interior 

 are paying. Similar results would happen 

 here. 



The great New York Central Railroad is 

 one of the best paying roads in this country, 

 in spite of the fact that it parallels the Hud- 

 son River, then the Erie Canal, and then the 

 Great Lakes. Another connected fact is that 

 a few years ago, when the people of the Em- 

 pire State had submitted to them the prob- 

 lem of having voted $101,000,000 to further 

 enlarge and deepen the Erie Canal, the New 

 York Central Railroad, the greatest taxpayer 

 in the State, voted for that bond issue, al- 

 though it has four tracks side by side par- 

 alleling the canal. Why did it do it? It 

 took the ground that the cheap water trans- 

 portation would cause such an influx of pop- 

 ulation and business enterprises of many 

 kinds and manufacturies of every kind to the 

 shores of that canal, that it could well af- 

 ford it. because of its increased passenger 

 and high-class traffic business. That, in my 

 judgment, would be the result of a proper 

 improvement of the general waterways of 

 the country. 



I wish I had time to go into that more 

 fully, but I know you are getting tired, and 

 there is another speaker to follow me. I 

 wish merely to make this suggestion in clos- 

 ing, that as you are interested in this great 

 conservation movement of improving the 

 forests, so you should be interested, and I 

 believe all of you are interested, in its kin- 

 dred subject, improving the waterways. Let 

 us all pnll together for our joint end. If we 



