700 



CONSERVATION 



Make the Rivers Available for 

 Transportation 



THE tide of western demand for river 

 transportation facilities is steadily 

 rising. 



A new and potential argument has 

 been found in the $8,000,000,000 crop 

 predicted by the United States Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture. At first thought, 

 such a crop would seem to call only 

 for rejoicing. However, as in mone- 

 tary discussions we are constantly in- 

 formed, crops, to be available, must be 

 "moved." 



To move crops we must, of course, 

 have the mechanism of exchange ; we 

 must, in addition, have the mechanism 

 of transportation. 



The West has by no means forgotten 

 car shortages in the past, and it is now 

 menaced with a similar shortage in the 

 early future. 



The Interstate Commerce Commis- 

 sion, through its chairman, Martin 

 Knapp, has announced that the rail- 

 roads this year will be unable to handle 

 the enormous traffic that will come from 

 large crops and the unusual activity in 

 business and that there will be a car 

 shortage similar to that of 1907, when 

 millions of bushels of grain were left 

 to rot upon the ground in the West be- 

 cause the railroads could not move the 

 freight. 



The vision is not enticing. The 

 West has not forgotten the hillocks, 

 almost mountains, of wheat which have 

 been piled for weeks together upon the 

 bare ground awaiting transportation 

 and menaced by storms. But President 

 Hill has long since assured the country 

 of the utter incapacity of the railroads 

 at any reasonably early day to handle 

 the country's freight. The only remain- 

 ing resource must be those highways 

 used so generally and for so many cen- 

 turies before railways were dreamed of, 

 namely, the rivers. 



Mr. Hill says : 



The freight to be carried by the railroads 

 has increased two and a quarter times in 

 ten years. The machine for handling it has 

 increased its size little more than one-fifth. 

 Production and business maintain their 



growth and volume. The railroads have 

 nearly exhausted their resources for public 

 service. 



In seeking more ample ways for traffic 

 the country turns to its waterways for relief. 

 These are about to emerge into an era of 

 restored usefulness and influence in the de- 

 velopment of our resources. 



The severest pressure upon transportation 

 facilities and the greatest increase of demand 

 upon them originates in the Middle West. 

 From these fertile lands comes the surplus 

 agricultural product that constitutes the real 

 wealth of this country, and that, either di- 

 rectly or converted into meats or other 

 foodstuffs, furnishes the body of our foreign 

 exports. The time is soon coming when their 

 product will be twice or fourfold what it is 

 to-day. The problem of getting these food 

 supplies out of the central basin and into 

 their ultimate markets is the most vital to its 

 economic welfare that the country has to 

 consider. 



A vast traffic like that which will gravitate 

 from the whole interior toward the Gulf as 

 soon as facilities are offered needs river 

 transportation. The embargo on commerce 

 would be lifted. Not only would the prod- 

 ucts of the Middle West find an open door 

 with a material lowering of the cost of 

 reaching a market, but traffic all over the 

 country would gain by this relief from pres- 

 sure at critical points. 



We have by nature the greatest system 

 of inland waterways on earth ; but, as 

 President Roosevelt informed Con- 

 gress, these rivers are, for transporta- 

 tion purposes, used less and worth less 

 than fifty years ago. 



The growing disuse of rivers for 

 transportation is to be traced not to 

 their inutility, but, we are told on high 

 authority, to railway hostility. 



Happily, however, this hostility is 

 waning. President Hill, as noted, and 

 President Finley, the first representing 

 the Great Northern and the second the 

 Southern Railway, have publicly de- 

 clared in favor of the development of 

 our inland waterways. These men pos- 

 sess sufficient breadth to perceive, what 

 the history of waterway development in 

 Europe has proved, that the increased 

 use of the rivers, instead of hindering, 

 has helped railway transportation. 



Freight of which railways may in in- 

 creasing measure well seek to rid them- 

 selves, that, namely of excessive weight 

 and bulk, and commanding low rates, 

 had far better be borne by the rivers, 

 leaving to the railways a constantly in- 



