THE COMMERCIAL POSSIBILITIES OF 

 SHALLOW STREAMS' 



By JOHN L, MATHEWS 



1HAVE been asked to speak to you reason to believe, and where the sit- 

 here to-day on a topic which has been nation does exist, the railroads, in most 

 of vital interest to me for several places, are now only too willing to co- 

 years, and one in the solution of which I operate with steamboat lines that are 

 am happy to say we are now making operated with the same sort of system 

 rapid progress. You are all of you famil- and the same sane engineering develop- 

 iar with the efforts that have been made ment that characterizes the operation of 

 to arouse public sentiment in the mat- the railroad. Every once in a while, 

 ter of securing congressional aid in some one, usually the secretary of the 

 deepening our shallow rivers ; and, more commercial association in some thriving 

 important than deepening them, in es- river city, is seized with the idea of put- 

 tablishing definite depths in their chan- ting the rivers to use. A banquet, with 

 nels and permanency in the course of rousing speeches ; a subscription paper 

 the water. Deep waterways are a very passed around, a collection of fifty or 

 necessary thing ; but whenever we have one hundred thousand dollars in 

 gone into Congress or have taken dele- pledges, the purchase of an old- 

 gates down the river to see our needs, fashioned, wooden-hulled, stern-wheel 

 they have asked us, "Why don't you use steamboat, and the experimental carry- 

 the channels that you have now?" ; Mr. ing of a few tons of cargo end only too 

 Burton and some of those who follow quickly in the snagging of the boat, 

 him having even gone to the length of its destruction by fire, or the failure of 

 suggesting that we need a law forbid- the enterprise because of the cost of 

 ding the railroads to compete with the maintaining the old rattle-trap system 

 rivers by cutting rates. I need hardly of the days of slavery, 

 to suggest to you, gentlemen, that such We are face to face with the problem 

 a law proposed in Congress would do of utilizing our rivers. There is no 

 more harm to the deep-waterway move- need for me here to convince you of 

 ment, and would tend more quickly to that fact. You have heard from many 

 make our campaign ridiculous in the great transportation experts, and among 

 eyes of the people, than anything else them James J. Hill, that the railways 

 that can be done for it. We do not cannot carry the freight which is of- 

 need any protection from the railroads fered, and that their capacity to do so 

 on our rivers, except that in individual grows less in increasing ratio with the 

 states we need the right of eminent do- enormous development of our country, 

 main for the use of steamboat com- You have heard from Hon. John Bar- 

 panies to enable them to secure a foot- rett, than whom no man is better in- 

 hold on the bank of the river in places formed of our needs in South America, 

 where the railroad has bought every that only by the establishment of water 

 foot of land to prevent steamers tying transportation in our little streams can 

 up at the bank. This contingency, I am we hope to revive trade with the Latin 

 happy to say, is not so frequent as some republics. Many of you had stood, as I 

 government departments would give us have stood, on the docks of the city of 



'Address delivered before the Southern Commercial Congress in Washington, D. C, 

 December 7. ... 



32 



