1908 



THE CANALS OF FRANCE 



45 



on French soil, two years before the 

 French Revolution, you will not won- 

 der that he adds the following expres- 

 sion of his sentiments : "Such an em- 

 ployment of the revenues of a great 

 kingdom is the only laudable way of 

 a monarch's acquiring immortality." 

 This in any case may be noted by you 

 all who are interested in waterways : 

 you see from this trustworthy author- 

 ity that canal-digging is the best way 

 to immortality. 



When the Revolution came we had 

 about 1,000 kilometers of canals. Na- 

 poleon had great plans for this as for 

 everything else, but they were not ful- 

 filled, the reason being that, as you 

 know, he had so many things to do. 

 He built only 200 kilometers. Since 

 then there have been two palmy pe- 

 riods for canals in France, first dur- 

 ing the Restoration and the reign of 

 Louis-Phillippe, and then the present 

 time. The canals learnt in the inter- 

 val what a crisis was. The Second 

 Empire was the period when an im- 

 mense impetus was given to railroad 

 building. Canals and railroads do not 

 like each other ; their manners are too 

 different. People who go quickly 

 have a tendency to scorn people who 

 go slowly ; and yet both kinds are use- 

 ful, and we know besides, by the fa- 

 ble of the hare and the tortoise, that 

 it is sometimes the fastest who arrives 

 last. Anyhow, the craze for railroads 

 rose so high at one time that there 

 were petitions for the drying out of a 

 canal, in order to use its bed as a rail- 

 road track ; but the canal survived and 

 is still in use. 



The greatest era of canal building in 

 France has been the present period. 

 One of the first things the present Re- 

 public did was to turn her attention to 

 the problem; and the system now in 

 force, started in 1874, was fully or- 

 ganized by the great law of 1879. 

 The aim has been a thoroughly prac- 

 tical and logical one: to complete, to 

 unify, to cheapen. Most of the older 

 canals had been built by contractors 

 who recouped themselves by levying 

 a tax on shipping. All those conces- 



sions have been purchased back by the 

 State and now, on the immense ma- 

 jority of our waterways, there are no 

 payments. Some new creations, which 

 were considered urgent, have been 

 made of late years by the State with 

 the help of the chambers of commerce, 

 the towns and the departments who 

 wanted them. These had to issue 

 loans, and they levy taxes to be able 

 to pay the interests ; but this is merely 

 a temporary shift bearing on one- 

 eighteenth only of the whole, and the 

 rule is to have throughout the country 

 free canals as we have free roads. 



Another great work done by the 

 Republic has been the unifying of all 

 the waterways : depth, breadth of the 

 canals, distance between the locks, 

 have been made uniform throughout 

 the country, so that our thirty or forty 

 canals, built at different periods, in 

 the course of centuries, are now as 

 one single canal conveying goods to all 

 parts of France and to all her principal 

 seaports. 



Owing to the recent great effort 

 made by the Republic, our canals' to- 

 tal length is now 4,675 kilometers; 

 the total expense has been about two 

 billion francs, and far from consider- 

 ing that it is too much we know quite 

 well that it is not enough, and we aud 

 new sums from time to time. Many 

 improvements were decided upon in 

 1903 and our parliament voted over 

 two hundred million francs to pro- 

 vide for them. To which sums should 

 be added others supplied by local mu- 

 nicipalities or other bodies, the Douai 

 Chamber of Commerce, for example, 

 contributing thirty million francs 

 above what the State is giving for the 

 Canal du Nord. 



Our canals are under State super- 

 vision ; they are built and kept up by 

 State engineers, taught in our special 

 high schools, and forming part of the 

 personnel of the Ministry of Public 

 Works. 



The happy effect of the laws voted 

 since the establishment of the Repub- 

 lic was not long in making itself felt; 

 during the twenty-five years between 



