176 HAUPT— TRANSPORTATION IN THE UNITED STATES. [April 



of one of segregation and dispersion to the waterways, as soon as 

 they may be put in condition for the traffic which has been diverted 

 for so many years, and for the maintenance of which the National 

 appropriations, although large, have been wholly inadequate and 

 inefficient. 



Mr, J. J. Hill has repeatedly shown so forcefully the impossi- 

 bility of meeting the demand for the additional trackage that it 

 is hardly necessary to reiterate, save for the record. He said " The 

 traffic of the country is congested beyond imagination. The com- 

 merce of the country is paralyzed, and continued, it means slow 

 death," The money required to restore the equilibrium would be 

 more than double the whole amount in circulation and the entire 

 capacity of all the rolling mills could not furnish the stock even if 

 the men and the money were at hand. This is certainly a critical 

 condition and so he recommends a canal down the Mississippi valley 

 from St. Louis to the gulf, as a measure of relief. Has this great 

 and experienced railroad president drawn on his imagination? Far 

 from it he has pointed out the only possible remedy which the 

 physics of the country affords, namely the subdivision into trunk 

 line water routes with short tributary rail deliveries to numerous 

 local points of distribution, and the substitution of the vessels of 

 much larger capacity for the small car-units which cannot be handled 

 to advantage. The system must also be one which can be operated 

 throughout the entire year and therefore its outlets should be in 

 latitudes below the winter frosts, as much as possible. 



But to return to the data and their deductions, and for conveni- 

 ence arranging them in tabular form for the decade 1895-1905, 



there follows : 



Elements of the Transportation Problem. 



Population. 



