INLAND WATERWAYS—CHISHOLM. 363 
But the grain trade of the Mississippi is largely, and the still 
greater coal trade of the Ohio-Mississippi almost wholly, carried on 
in a peculiar manner possible only in very wide, though not neces- 
sarily very deep, rivers. It is by means of what are called tow 
barges—that is, a number of barges firmly lashed together and pushed 
onward by means of a stern-wheel steamer. The coal is all brought 
from the Ohio and its feeders, the Monongahela and the Great Kana- 
wha, the first of which is one of the two head streams of the Ohio 
which meet at Pittsburg, while the other joins the main stream in 
West Virginia. At Pittsburg tows of barges drawing 8 feet are made 
up, carrying from 10,000 to 15,000 tons of coal. They may have to 
wait for a sufficient depth of water before proceeding on their way 
to Cincinnati and Louisville. At Louisville two or three Pittsburg 
tows may be made into one, carrying from 35,000 to 40,000 tons. Even 
one of 70,000 tons is on record. One carrying 40,000 tons, Professor 
Johnson tells us, is about 10 acres in extent. At the same ratio, one 
of 70,000 tons would extend over 174 acres—say 140 by 600 yards. 
It is boasted that this is the cheapest mode of inland carriage in the 
world, and yet even this traffic, which increased enormously between 
1880 and 1889, would appear to be now declining in the aggregate, 
and is certainly not keeping pace with the enormous progress of the 
American coal trade generally. In 1889 the total amount of freight 
carried on the Ohio was officially returned at above 16,000,000 tons, 
of which tow-barge traffic made up considerably more than 12,000,000 
tons. In a consular report for 1905, the total traffic of all kinds was 
estimated at 11,000,000 tons,” and the figures in the official returns for 
the coal trade of the Great Kanawha in recent years are at least not 
progressive. This, no doubt, is the cause of the demand made by 
those interested in the Ohio navigation for the improvement of that 
river by the Government of the United States, so as to afford a mini- 
mum depth of 9 feet at low water, a demand to which the Government 
has so far acceded as to obtain from Congress appropriations for a 
survey of the entire river for that purpose. 
But a still greater project is now being agitated, one, namely, for 
the creation of an uninterrupted waterway of 14 feet in depth from 
Chicago to New Orleans, so as to allow of loaded seagoing vessels pass- 
ing from one port to the other. An association, known as the Lakes- 
to-the-Gulf Deep Waterway Association, has been formed to carry out 
this scheme, and I am informed by its secretary that its total cost 
is estimated at about £14,500,000. Part of the proposed waterway 
@Kmory R. Johnson, ‘‘ Ocean and Inland Water Transportation’ (London: 
Appleton, 1906), p. 364. 
>For. Off. Rep., Ann. Ser., No. 3622, p. 35. 
¢ See the Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers of the War Department 
of the United States for 1905, vol. 6, part 2, pp. 1886, 1887. 
