358 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1907. 
mouth (Emden) in 1904 was just under 190,000 tons, of which 97,000 
tons was coal; in 1905, 224,000 tons carried down, of which 68,000 
tons was coal. Upstream from Emden there passed, in 1905, 475,000 
tons, of which 258,000 tons consisted of iron ores. 
Those who advocate the improvement of existing waterways and 
the construction of new ones very often lay great stress on their value 
as a means of carrying local agricultural produce and manufactured 
goods specially for export. It will, therefore, be worth while to 
consider what is achieved by the German waterways under these 
heads. For the consideration of the efficiency of waterways as car- 
riers of agricultural produce, Germany affords no better subject of 
study than the great consuming center of Berlin. Elaborate tables 
drawn up in a work already quoted, written in the interest of the 
German waterways, enable us to make comparisons on this head. The 
raw agricultural products most largely carried by water to Berlin are 
the chief bread grains of Germany, rye and wheat, and, on the average 
of the years 1896-1899, about 69 per cent of these were received 
by water, and about 31 per cent accordingly by rail. But nearly 
all this was foreign grain collected at the seaports. A different tale 
is told by the figures relating to potatoes. In 1899 the proportion 
conveyed to Berlin by water was less than 2 per cent. In fact, an 
examination of the data regarding the trade in agricultural products 
generally bears out the truth of the general statement made in the 
work just cited,? that “the raising of agricultural products always 
presupposes a relatively extensive area of production, and is thus a 
decentralized industry, on which account, in the great majority of 
cases, it is only the railways that come into consideration with refer- 
ence to their transport.” 
Of manufactured articles carried by waterways, the only one of 
importance as regards quantity, except on the Elbe, on whose banks 
there are large centralized industries concerned in the refining of 
sugar and the manufacture of fertilizers, are iron and iron wares. 
Now, in 1905, of the raw and scrap iron conveyed to the seaports or 
across the German frontier, only about 25 per cent was carried by 
water, 75 per cent by rail, and all but a small fraction of the quan- 
tity carried by water went by the Rhine, that carried by the Dort- 
mund-Ems Canal being utterly insignificant. Of the iron and steel 
manufactures of all kinds similarly carried, the share of the water- 
ways was about 40 per cent, that of the railways 60 per cent, and in 
this case again the share of the Rhine made up the great bulk (more 
than 95 per cent) of the total water-borne traffic. That of the Dort- 
mund-Ems Canal was little more than 2 per cent. 
@‘PDie Schiffahrt der deutschen Stréme,’ vol. 1, pp. 185 and 238-245. 
Vol. 1, p. 152. 
