34 AMERICAN FORESTRY 



lease the several docks to the operatmg Let me impress another thing on you, 

 companies or should otherwise arrange and if you will never forget it, but will 

 for this to be done. In cases where shape your plans for river work upon 

 the towns do not build these docks, they it, you will find that you will progress 

 should facilitate in every degree pos- toward definite achievement much more 

 sible the erection and operation of these rapidly. The business of carrying 

 docks by the steamboat companies. freight by water is a business of great 

 Freight cannot be carried by railroads dignity and a business which must be 

 in the main-line business in mixed trains treated in a dignified manner. Such 

 which stop to pick up their cargo at treatment must contemplate the invest- 

 the depot platform. How absurd it ment of capital on a large scale, and it 

 would be if the Pennsylvania Railroad must contemplate, in addition, an ex- 

 should announce in the papers of the amination of trade routes extending 

 day that they would receive freight at from i8o degrees east to i8o degrees 

 the Union depot, and that a train would west of your location. There is no part 

 come through about four o'clock and of the world so remote that you may not 

 stop there while the freight was trucked have to receive cargo from it. There 

 aboard ; and if they should add to the is no trade route in America so set- 

 announcement the fact that this train tied in its ways that you may not ex- 

 would take passengers for New York! pect to divert some freight from it or 

 It sounds laughable, but it is not more to concentrate some tonnage upon it, 

 laughable than any one of the announce- and the possibility of the lowering of 

 ments in the papers of New Orleans, rates by your competitors, of the divert- 

 Memphis, Vicksburg, or St. Louis, or ing of freight to new roads, all must 

 any one of a hundred other cities, every enter into your plans. The market to 

 day in the year, that the magnificent which your manufacturers ship, the 

 new steamboat Centurion will receive source of your principal supplies, and 

 freight and passengers to depart at four possible railroad combinations which can 

 o'clock at the levee to-day, for Greew- affect freight rates by allowing them to 

 ville and the Bends, or wherever she be carried for a short distance on your 

 may be headed for. river — all is for you to consider; and 

 The most important element in the you must enter into this business as 

 development of the freight business on you would enter into railroad building. 

 our waters is the absolute divorce, im- with the definite knowledge of the kind 

 mediately carried out, of the freight of cargoes you are going to carry, of 

 business and the passenger traffic, and the kind of machinery with which you 

 the separation into a rigid classifica- are going to handle them, and, most of 

 tion of the through freight business antl all, of the kind of a box car you are go- 

 the local business. Any one who wishes ing to make of your boat, 

 to do a little peddling business with ex- In order, then, to be of commercial 

 press matter can buy a wagon and drive value to you as shippers and manufac- 

 out among the farmers on a definite turers, your streams must have the three 

 route, and every day gather in the pack- essential elements developed coordi- 

 ages they wish to send to town and nately — the channels, the boats, and the 

 every night deliver to them the things terminals. 



they have ordered from the city by tele- Concerning the channels, I wish to 



phone. Any one who wishes to invest say a word briefly. Every river in the 



ten or fifteen thousand dollars in a South has been surveyed by the engi- 



packet boat can do the same thing on a neer officers of the General Government, 



river, and that is all that is done to-day and some plan for its amelioration has 



on the greatest number of our streams, been adopted. For twenty-five, thirty. 



But the'renl development must come in even forty years, the engineers have 



the establishment of permanent, through struggled with these streams to carry 



lines handling freights that belong to out these projects on pitiful appropria- 



movcmcnts which influence and affect tions furnished them by Congress. No 



the traffic (^f the world. benefit wall ever come to you from your 



