UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



.VJOS 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



the Ohio, which forms one gateway toward 

 the North, and El Paso, at the gap cut by the 

 Rio Grange in the Rocky Mountains, which is 

 the southern route toward the Pacific. 



Now that the Panama Canal is completed, 

 new life has naturally been given to Southern 

 industries and commerce ; this influence is going 

 to be felt by every city on the Mississippi, 

 from Minneapolis to the Gulf. Much com- 

 merce that now goes east and west will go 

 south, and still more commerce will be created 

 by the fact of cheap transportation to the west 

 coast and to the Orient. New Orleans will 

 surely lie on one of the main world thorough- 

 fares. Moreover, the expanding trade between 

 the United States and South America adds 

 largely to the tonnage through the Canal and 

 the Mississippi. 



In the North-Central Section. Thomas Jef- 

 ferson in 1803 thought it would be a thousand 

 years before the Mississippi Valley, or even 

 that portion of it east of the river, could be 

 fully settled. The short time required to popu- 

 late this section was the result of rivers and 

 lakes which formed highways into the wilder- 

 ness, of the level surface which favored equally 

 land and water transportation, and, above all, of 

 steam. 



The early development of this district was 

 principally due to the extensive natural water- 

 ways, but in the last twenty or thirty years the 

 influence of most of these has greatly declined. 

 On the upper Mississippi there are still some 

 rafts of logs, though few compared to a few 

 years ago, and the Ohio carries great fleets of 

 barges loaded with coal. On the other hand, 

 the Missouri, having no commodity to trans- 

 port which cannot as well go by rail, has long 

 been practically deserted. 



Canals were early built connecting the Missis- 

 sippi River with the Great Lakes, along three 

 routes, following the portages of the early 

 French explorers and fur traders; these are (1) 

 between the Wisconsin and Fox rivers at Port- 

 age, Wisconsin; (2) between the Illinois and 

 Chicago rivers; and (3) between the Ohio 

 River and Lake Erie at Toledo and Cleveland. 

 Another canal lately completed connects the 

 Illinois River with the Mississippi at Rock 

 Island (see ILLINOIS AND MICHIGAN CANAL; 

 HENNEPIN CANAL). Most of these canals, how- 

 ever, will have to be either deepened or aban- 

 doned, as their depth (four to seven feet) is 

 insufficient to compete with railways. The 

 state of Ohio has already begun to deepen the 

 canal from Cleveland toward the Ohio to 



twelve feet, but it is doubtful whether even this 

 depth is adequate. The Chicago Sanitary and 

 Ship Canal, having a depth of twenty-two 

 feet, was constructed of this size as the begin- 

 ning of a deep-water connection between the 

 Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico, popularly 

 referred to as the Lakes-to-the-Gulf Waterway. 

 Whether a twenty-two-foot canal could be 

 constructed all the way to the Gulf may be 

 doubted, but the deepening of the Mississippi 

 and Illinois rivers so as to afford a fourteen- 

 foot channel has already become a practical 

 public question. 



The Great Lakes, however, are by far the 

 most important factors in the commerce of 

 this region, forming a superb waterway ex- 

 tending over a thousand miles into the very 

 heart of the continent, and bearing in a year 

 about one-third as much freight as all the mil- 

 ways in the United States, at about one-tenth 

 the cost, though this advantage is somewhat 

 reduced by the expense of transshipping cargoes 

 to and from the lake vessels. For years the 

 average freight rate per ton per mile on the 

 Great Lakes was .81 mill, while the average 

 rate by rail was 7.8 mills; both rates are now 

 somewhat higher. A single vessel has carried 

 from Duluth to Buffalo 422,000 bushels of grain, 

 equivalent to fourteen bushels to the acre from 

 about fifty square miles of wheat fields. The 

 Sault Sainte Marie Canal, connecting lakes 

 Superior and Huron, carries a tonnage several 

 times greater than the Suez Canal. Cargoes go 

 in bulk, unbroken, from Duluth to Buffalo. By 

 using the new Welland Canal or the enlarged 

 Erie Canal they may even reach the sea, al- 

 though the size of these canals does not permit 

 them to carry the larger lake vessels. 



The level surface and relatively dense popu- 

 lation of the interior plain have caused it to be 

 covered with a closely-meshed net of railways, 

 especially in the region south of the Great 

 Lakes. The greatest railway center in this sec- 

 tion is naturally Chicago, which is likewise the 

 world's greatest railroad center, for one-sixth of 

 the world's mileage centers there. That city 

 lies at the southwestern end of the Great Lakes' 

 route, where all railroads from the West and 

 Northwest necessarily converge in order to pass 

 around Lake Michigan. This location is the 

 one great advantage possessed by Chicago over 

 Milwaukee. Duluth and Superior at the north- 

 west end of the Great Lakes' route, occupy a 

 somewhat similar location, and but for the 

 Canadian boundary, which turns trade from its 

 natural channels, might almost rival Chicago. 



