THE FOOD CRISIS AND AMERICANISM IO5 



ability successfully to compete with all other peoples 

 in the world's market with its manufactured products. 

 If Belgium, owning her own railways, can afford to 

 maintain this vast system of internal waterways, why 

 should not our country encourage the development of 

 our own? Whenever this subject is discussed in the 

 press or on the platform, suggestions are made that 

 the railways must be protected from water competition. 

 Why, if not on the theory that the people were cre- 

 ated for the transportation companies, instead of the 

 transportation companies for the people? By what 

 power, human or divine, was the accruing blessing of 

 water transportation bequeathed to a few people living 

 along the shores and to the transportation companies ? 



I found that from a given point in Belgium to any 

 other point, whether fifty or five hundred miles dis- 

 tant, the freight charges by water were not more than 

 50 per cent, of the freight charges by rail. 



On some stretches of the Missouri River, companies 

 with small capital and meager equipment are profitably 

 carrying freight. But such companies can never se- 

 cure sufficient capital permanently to carry freight, so 

 long as there is a fear on the part of investors that 

 the Government may, in the future, as in the past, 

 permit railway lines, paralleling these streams, tem- 

 porarily to make such low rates as to bankrupt the 

 waterway companies, at the same time recuperating 

 the railway losses by increased rates from inland 

 points, and when the boat companies are driven out of 

 business, resume original high rates. Our Govern- 

 ment should at once take a firm stand in the matter 

 and assure the American people that all the rights, 



