136 THE NEW AGRICULTURE. 



canal will equal 10,000,000, but the entire structure of the 

 Erie is based upon that tonnage, with provision for greatly 

 enlarging its capacity at any time at moderate cost. The 

 carrying trade of the Great Lakes is approximately 90,000,000 

 tons per annum, and the new canal will furnish the cheapest 

 possible outlet for this vast commerce to the sea. While the 

 cost per unit is not nearly so high in the construction of the 

 Erie as in that of the Panama, more material must be ex- 

 cavated, more masonry used, and more dams built in the 

 former than in the latter, while the engineering questions 

 involved in the one undertaking as in the other are of the 

 first magnitude. 



While these lake canals are intended to enable New York 

 to retain her prestige and increase the degree of her com- 

 mercial supremacy by the cheap transportation to the seaboard 

 which they will render inevitable, they will profit every far- 

 mer, and every merchant for that matter, not only within 

 the immediate reach of their rates, but, by tapping the Great 

 Lakes, they will carry the same benefits for more than fif- 

 teen hundred miles back into the interior of the country. 



The Panama Canal, while promising to prove of immense 

 profit to the eastern and western seaboards, will exert an 

 ameliorating influence upon the freight rates of the whole 

 country, but particularly will this be noticeable throughout 

 the states bordering on the gulf. 



If one great movement may be prognosticated from what 

 we know of the inception and progress of kindred move- 

 ments, then there is reason to believe that the era of canal- 

 building in this country has but begun. We may look for 

 Chicago to be connected by a great canal with Detroit or 

 Toledo, as we know she is with the Mississippi and the gulf. 



