36 AMERICAN FORESTRY 



ship, any cargo coming to New Orleans, sand at the foot of the bank, and by 

 finds a pubHc dock and a low, fixed a tortuous and deep-rutted road the 

 charge awaiting it. But this is not all. merchants of Montgomery have dragged 

 On the public dock at every point is their freight up this hill and through the 

 the track of the public belt railroad, on streets of the town. Irregular service, 

 which operate cars and engines owned high insurance, and, above all, this 

 by the public, and for a uniform charge charge, which was not less than $2 a 

 of $2 a car freight from the shipside ton for local delivery, have militated 

 is delivered on any railroad or to any against the use of the river to Mont- 

 factory which has a sidetrack in New gomery, have made it an inland city 

 Orleans, and for the same rate these with rates not to be compared with 

 cars are transferred from the factory to those at Mobile. 



the waterside. On incoming freight this I am furnished with certain statistics 



charge is absorbed by the railroads, and of this port which will interest you bv 



also on freight shipped directly from Mr. H. S. Kealhofer, the secretary of 



New Orleans, but whereas ten years ago the Montgomery Chamber of Com- 



the New Orleans shipper paid a car merce, than whom no man has worked 



rental as high as $15 a car to get this harder or more directly to the point for 



service done by the railway, and was the reduction of freight rates and the 



forced to go to the ship himself for his establishment of Montgomery as a 



bill of lading, to-day he delivers his water-differential point, 



freight to the belt-line and collects from Remember that Montgomery is away 



it a bill of lading to any port in the up in the middle of Alabama, on a di- 



world. rect route from Vicksburg on the Mis- 



This is not the end of the New Or- sissippi, and from Memphis, also on the 

 leans investment. Its belt-line is profit- Mississippi, on the Alabama River, and 

 able, its docks are profitable, the city is theoretically open to the sea. Mobile 

 making money, and its trade is grow- is 180 miles farther from St. Louis, 

 ing ; but the city will go ahead further, and to be reached from that city by 

 extending its wharves, and it will not water its freight would go on a the- 

 be long before the necessities and the oretical steamJjoat, which does not ex- 

 example of other cities will induce New ist, from St. Louis to New Orleans. 

 Orleans to erect the terminal machinery and on a theoretical coast steamboat line, 

 that will make its outfit complete. which does not exist, from New Or- 



The other example which I shall cite leans to Mobile. Mobile is, therefore, 



is that of the city of Montgomery, Ala., on the same sort of a theoretical water 



on the Alabama River, connected with channel that Montgomery is, except that 



Mobile by a channel which might easily it has terminal facilities and deeper 



be deepened to nine feet and main- water. 



tained at that depth throughout the The rate on flour from St. Louis to 

 year, but which now falls to three feet Mobile is 36 cents a barrel, and until re- 

 in the summer time. Even at three cently the rate to Montgomery was 58 

 feet, Mobile and Montgomery should be cents a barrel. This is a .situation very 

 connected by a regular service, and like the Spokane case, for the flour 

 there has, in fact, been a packet-boat could be shipped from St. Louis to 

 service connecting the cities, but Mont- Mobile and back to Montgomery for 

 gomery is situated on a high bank — the same rate that it could be sent di- 

 eighty or ninety feet, if my memory rect. Montgomery, therefore, which 

 serves me — above the river, and the used 225,000 barrels of flour a year, 

 situation is complicated by the fact that was paying practically $50,000 more 

 the river rises fifty or sixty feet in flood than Mobile paid for freight on the 

 time. Ever since the first steamboat same quantity of flour. Packing-house 

 whistle frightened the cotton-pickers in products, of which the citv used 10,000 

 the valley of the Alabama, steamboats tons a year, came from .St. Louis on a 

 and packet-boats have dumped their 42-cent rate, against 33 cents to Mo- 

 freight on a little patch of mud and bile. The 3,000 car'oads nf grain prod- 



