PAPERS OX GEOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY 373 



as "Hawley's canal bilP'. The report of the senate 

 committee to whom the bill was referred illustrates the 

 turn which agitation for water transportation had taken, 

 a turn not at all different from that it is taking in onr 

 present Congress. The considering committee said, ''Xo 

 improvement of the same probable cost would be pro- 

 ductive of so great a benefit; and that the benefit to 

 be produced would not be confined to the state of Illinois 

 alone, in which the work is situated, but would directly 

 and inevitably embrace the state of Iowa, Wisconsin 

 and Minnesota, and indirectly affect all the states lying 

 west of these, whose railroad lines would bring produce 

 down to be shipped by the canal''. How like the current 

 statements we read concerning the St. Lawi-ence project ! 

 Suffice it to say that Congress evidenced sufficient inter- 

 est to authorize surveys of the proposed route in 1870, 

 1874, 1882 and in 1886. These surveys having proved the 

 feasibility of the waterway from the engineering stand- 

 point, in answer to the clamor of state legislatures, me- 

 morials from waterways conventions, boards of trade 

 and chambers of commerce, in 1890 Congress authorized 

 the construction of the waterway, fifty-six years after 

 agitation for it had commenced and twenty-seven years 

 after the bill had been presented for consideration. 



The significance of the twenty-seven years which the 

 Hawley Canal Bill spent in Congress is not remarkable 

 until one considers the changes in the transportation 

 problem that had come about in that time. During this 

 period of agitation railroad growth had been very rapid 

 throughout the cereal region of the upper ^[ississippi 

 basin. The railroads had become masters of the trans- 

 portation problem through increase in mileage and 

 through improvement of carriage facilities. This period 

 was one in which railroads set rates unhampered by such 

 governing influences as railroad commissions and with- 

 out concern for inter-state commerce conunissions. The 

 adoption of rates truly in keeping with the sei*vice rend- 

 ered, however, was coming abont even at the time when 

 the waterway was authorized in 1890. Had the whims 

 of a slow-to-act Congress, and the political adjustments 



