NAVIGATION RESOURCES OF AMERICAN WATERWAYS 575 



spending figures for the railways were 410,- 

 000 tons carried one mile per mile of line 

 in 1875, and 800,000 in 1905. The relative 

 importance of the traffic of the railways and 

 waterways in Germany is shown by the fact 

 that twenty-five per cent, of the total ton 

 mileage of rail and water traffic in 1905 was 

 water borne, and seventy-five per cent, 

 moved upon rails. Thirty years earlier the 

 waterwa3's had twenty-one per cent, and the 

 railroads had seventy-nine per cent, of the 

 combined ton mileage. 



These brief references to England, France, 

 and Germany suffice to show that the United 

 States has as yet done less than has been 

 done by her leading industrial and commer- 

 cial rivals in the development and iise of 

 inland waterways, if we except — as of course 

 we ought — the chain of Great Lakes which 

 have no counterpart in any other country. 

 Whether it is desirable that the United 

 States should follow the example of France 

 and Germany as regards inland water trans- 

 portation is a question to which the Ameri- 

 can people are now giving serious thought. 

 There can be no uncertainty as to the im- 

 portance of the transportation services per- 

 formed by our coastwise shipping, and by 

 the fleet operated on the Great Lakes. The 

 coastwise and Great Lakes traffic is rapidly 

 growing; but upon our canals and many 

 of our rivers, traffic languishes or declines. 



Is it wise, it may be asked, for the United 

 States to spend money in constructing canals 

 and improving our rivers, and if so, under 

 what conditions and to what extent? This 

 is too large a question for one to attempt 

 to answer fully in a short paper, the primary 

 purpose of which is to present data rather 

 than to draw conclusions ; but some indica- 

 tion as to what policy may best be adopted 

 may be given by calling attention briefly to 

 the causes that account for the decline in 

 canal and river traffic and by stating certain 

 facts which seem to indicate that well- 

 developed inland waterways may assist 

 largely in the future economic progress of 

 our country. 



The causes accounting for the decline in 

 the traffic upon our canals and rivers have 

 been so clearly stated by the President in 

 his address and in his special message of 

 February 26, 1908, transmitting to Congress 

 the preliminary report of the Inland Water- 

 waj's Commission, and the same subject has 

 been so fully presented in that report that 

 a detailed discussion of those causes seems 

 unnecessary. 



The primary reason for the decline in the 

 use of canals of such small dimensions and 

 river channels so shallow as to permit the 

 use only of craft capable of transporting 

 100 to 200 tons of cargo, is to be found in 

 the very success which the railways of the 

 United States have had in providing cheap 

 transportation for heavy and bulky com- 

 modities. In no other country of the world 

 have rail transportation costs been reduced 



to such a low figure. The ability of our 

 railroads to handle this class of traffic so 

 economically has resulted not only from the 

 genius of the Americal people in the use of 

 machinery to do man's heavy work, but 

 also, and more largely, from the fact that 

 by far the greater share of the tonnage of 

 American railroads consists of such bulky 

 commodities as coal, iron, ore, lumber, and 

 .grain, which can be handled not only in car- 

 load lots, but in train-loads, and which, 

 from the very size of our country, must be 

 moved long distances in order to reach the 

 manufacturing centers of the United States 

 and the primary markets within and with- 

 out our borders. 



In many other countries it has been found 

 more economical to do the heavier trans- 

 portation work by making large use of wa- 

 terways, and to develop the railway traffic 

 more particularly with reference — and this 

 is especially the case with England, France, 

 and Germany — to the speedy movement and 

 schedule delivery of parcels, packages, and 

 general commodity freight. This organiza- 

 tion of the transportation service by rail 

 is possible where there is a division of 

 the transportation work between the rail- 

 roads and waterways, and it results in the 

 close co-ordination of railroad freight traffic 

 with the wholesale and retail trade. It 

 enables merchants and manufacturers to re- 

 duce capital costs and warehousing expenses 

 to a minimum. It meets the needs of densely 

 populated and highly developed industrial 

 countries such as France and Germany, and 

 especially of such a country as Great Britain, 

 for, although the inland waterways of Great 

 Britain are, as a whole, less carefully de- 

 veloped than are those of France and Ger- 

 many, a large share of the domestic com- 

 merce of the United Kingdom is carried 

 by water. The navigation services which 

 most countries can secure only by means of 

 inland waterways, the island of Great Brit- 

 ain, with its 3,900 miles of tidal coast, ob- 

 tains from the surrounding ocean — the best 

 of all highways. 



Such an organization of the business of 

 transportation as has been worked out in 

 the three European countries just men- 

 tioned, does not result in as low average 

 freight rates by rail as prevail in the United 

 States ; but the cost of wholesale and re- 

 tail distribution and of many manufacturing 

 activities are undoubtedly less than they 

 would be were the people of Europe served 

 almost entirely by railroads and not by rail- 

 roads and waterways. Our dependence upon 

 railroads, almost exclusively, for the move- 

 ment of bulky commodities long distances 

 even at low average rates, while we_ at 

 the same time neglect the development and 

 use of our inland waterways, does not nec- 

 essarily mean that we have organized our 

 work of production and distribution in the 

 most economical manner. Indeed, there 

 can be little doubt that as social and indus- 



