376 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



construction. The country tlirongli wliicli the canal 

 passes is agricultural and the only large towns on the 

 route located its western terminus. The canal affords a 

 connection with the Illinois Eiver as far up as it is 

 navigable, namely to La Salle. There are many flourish- 

 ing manufacturing towns on that river or near it, and it 

 is natural to suppose that some of their products — coal, 

 tiles, brick, stone, cement and foundry products, — would 

 form freight for canal carriage. Grain and possibly live- 

 stock will be transported by canal. On the west the 

 heavy merchandise of Moline, Rock Island and Daven- 

 port may supply some traffic. The effect upon freight 

 rates which was hoped for by canal construction at the 

 time of intense agitation, — eighteen or twenty years be- 

 fore completion — has been realized from other sources 

 than water competition. Rivalry between rail lines, in- 

 crease of the railroad net, and the effect of larger train- 

 loads and more efficient hauling, had wrought the needed 

 reduction in cost of rail carriage." ''The first practical 

 use of the canal", continued the chief engineer, "will 

 probably be to pass launches, house-boats and pleasure 

 craft from the Chicago district and upper Illinois River 

 through to the Rock and Mississippi rivers." The pro- 

 phecy of the chief engineer has been a true one. The 

 expenditure of almost seven and one-third million dol- 

 lars in the completion of a seven foot channel between 

 the Illinois and Mississippi in 1907 came even more than 

 eighteen or twenty years too late. Had the waterway 

 been builded immediately after the opening of the Illi- 

 nois and Michigan Canal in 1848 instead of fifty-nine 

 years later, its extension of navigable water westward 

 would probably have exerted the influence expected. 

 Such a water connection thus established between Lake 

 Michigan and the Mississippi at Rock Island might have 

 saved the discarding of the Illinois and Michigan Canal 

 and have induced authorization of the enlarging of that 

 canal as proposed several times in the days of its de- 

 cline. Such a waterway might have proved through its 

 usefulness the value of a Lakes-to-the Gulf Deep Water- 

 way to carry water competition southward. Its economic 



