40 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



streams, such as the White River, the 

 Forked Deer, and the Obion, which we 

 will have to serve even on less water 

 than thirty inches. See how easily this 

 can be done. We have prepared two 

 plans for steel boats, each of them 

 drawn by the eminent English naval 

 architect, Sir John Thornycroft. One 

 of these, for the White River, is for a 

 steel towboat which will propel about 

 600 tons ahead of her up that river, 

 and a thousand to 1,200 tons, or 

 even more, down stream. This is a 

 little steel boat of remarkable power and 

 efficiency, drawing only fifteen inches 

 with her fuel on board and having 150 

 horsepower. For the Obion and Forked 

 Deer we have designed by the same 

 authority a towboat which will propel 

 100 to 300 tons up stream and ver} 

 fair cargoes of cotton, cotton seed an(T 

 other products down stream on a draft 

 of twelve inches of water for a towboat, 

 and this towboat has 125 horsepower. 

 These boats are built very light and we 

 do not care to use them any farther 

 than necessary because we believe in 

 putting one-fourth inch steel instead of 

 one-eighth inch steel into our hulls when 

 we can. 



These figures give you an idea of 

 what the towboats draw. The big 

 barges which our company is going to 

 use will draw fifteen inches light, and 

 will carry freight on any depth over 

 that. They sink one inch for every 

 fifty tons. They are very large and too 

 cumbersome for the little channels, but 

 we have also designed very light, 

 small barges carrying too to 200 

 tons for use on the twelve-inch and 

 fifteen-inch rivers. This traffic has to 

 be handled with the greatest care to 

 avoid snagging and other dangers, but 

 it requires not a very heavy investment, 

 and when the boats are devoted to high- 

 class traffic, as they can be. carrying 

 manufactured goods and productswhich 

 pay by rail eight to ten mills, and even 

 2 cents a ton mile, they can furnish a 

 very profitable service at rates averag- 



ing two and one-half to three and one- 

 half mills a ton mile, putting first-class' 

 goods practically on a parity with rail- 

 road coal rates. 



Given this sort of apparatus, pre- 

 pared for your river with a view of 

 using your streams at all stages of 

 water, and not being subject to delay, 

 you should have no difficulty in making 

 your small streams of the highest com- 

 mercial value, reducing the costs of 

 freight from your cities to the sea, 

 giving you ready service without the 

 delays incident to rail congestion, and 

 freeing you from the extortion which 

 the railways have only too often prac- 

 tised on the interior. 



And now, in conclusion, I want to 

 say a word about this big revival of 

 traffic on the Mississippi. We have or- 

 ganized there a $10,000,000 corporation, 

 which will in a very short time have to 

 increase its capital to $25,000,000. This 

 company proposes to navigate the deep 

 channels of the Mississippi with deep 

 boats and the shallow channels with 

 shallow boats. It proposes to go out 

 from New Orleans with ocean steamers 

 to any part of the world to which our 

 customers wish to ship a cargo, and to 

 maintain regular lines to the principal 

 South American cities. 



We will do more than this. We will 

 put on coast line steamships and trains 

 of barges for sea-towing to the mouths 

 of all your southern streams. We shall 

 go to Aransas, to Houston, to the Sa- 

 bine, to Pensacola, to Apalachicola, to 

 Brunswick, to Charleston, and to all the 

 intervening ports along the coast, and 

 wherever you have a little river, and on 

 that little river put your steel boats and 

 your efficient transportation and trans- 

 fer "apparatus, our ships and barges will 

 come to you and collect your freight at 

 the river mouth, and basing our traffic 

 on the great port of the Gulf at New 

 Orleans we will provide an economical 

 oversea outlet for you to every port in 

 Christendom that you may wish to 

 ship to. 



