INLAND WATERWAYS—CHISHOLM. 349 
are very few inland waterways that offer those favorable conditions. 
Still, speed is not equally important in all cases. The greater the 
bulk of the goods in proportion to their value, the heavier will be as 
a rule the relative cost of carriage, the more important, therefore, a 
money saving in transport charges, and the less urgency to that ex- 
tent for economizing merely in time. 
But, further, even in considering different methods of transport 
between two points on which a waterway is available, it must be borne 
in mind that great economies in transport are secured by carrying 
goods in great quantities. It is for this reason that British shippers 
keep building larger and larger numbers of large ships and increasing 
the size of those ships, and Americans keep building more and more 
powerful locomotives for the hauling of long trains composed of huge 
steel wagons built as light as possible in proportion to the load they 
carry. On this ground the utility of a waterway must depend very 
greatly on its capacity. 
Again, only a comparatively small quantity of goods can be con- 
veyed direct by one means of transport from the point of origin 
to the place of consumption or utilization. They have mostly to be 
transferred from one vehicle to another. This necessarily involves 
cost. The cost varies greatly with the nature of the commodities 
handled, but in all cases it makes it important to avoid this handling 
as much as possible. In a report advocating a great scheme, which 
I shall have occasion to refer to again in this paper, it is stated that 
“a ton of coal is carried the thousand miles from Buffalo to Duluth 
for about the cost of shoveling it from the sidewalk into the cellar ;” ¢ 
and though I would not be understood to hint that when coal is han- 
dled on a large scale, the cost of handling approaches the cost of 
finally putting it in the cellar, still this statement is a significant 
reminder of the importance of this element in the cost of carriage. 
The advantage to Germany of being able to communicate by rail 
without break of bulk with all surrounding countries except Russia 
(where there is a different railway gauge) can be abundantly illus- 
trated from the commercial statistics of that country. It was to 
secure this advantage that great railways were built across and partly 
through the Alps, and the numerous trains to be seen even in central 
Ttaly (how far south I can not say from my own observation) contain- 
ing wagons that have come, if we may judge from the inscriptions 
on them, both from Austria across the Brenner and from the Rhine 
valley through the St. Gothard, are a speaking illustration of the 
same thing. The St. Gothard tunnel had a very speedy effect in de- 
veloping a trade, even in heavy iron goods, between Germany and 
Italy, and German coal has been carried into Italy as far as Milan, 
@This is no exaggeration. The average freight for hard coal from Buffalo to 
Duluth in 1904 was about 1s. 6d. per long ton; in 1905, about 1s, 10d. 
