92 CANALS. 



The traffic of the canals of Ireland amounted to 708,174 tons in 1898, 

 while the goods traffic of the Irish railways was 5,113,419 tons in the same 

 year. 



In an admirable memorandum on " The Policy of Water Carriage m 

 England," which Lieutenant-General Rundall, R.E., handed in to the Com- 

 mission on Canals (1883), the distinctive advantages of water transport are 

 excellently set out as follows : — - 



" It is not only in the item of cheapness, however, that canal carriage '.s 

 superior, but it also possesses the following advantages: ■ — 



" I. It admits of any class of goods being carried in the manner and at the 

 speed which proves to be most economical and suitable for it, without the 

 slightest interference with any other class. 



" 2. The landing or shipment of cargo is not necessarily confined to certain 

 fixed stations as is obligatory on railways, but boats can stop anywhere on 

 their journey to load and unload. 



" 3. The boat itself often serves as a warehouse, in which an owner may 

 keep his cargo till sold. 



" 4. The dead weight to be moved in proportion to the load is much less In 

 the case of canal carriage than that of railway. The ordinary railway truck 

 weighs nearly as much as the load put on it, whereas a cargo boat will carry 

 four or five times its own weight. 



" 5. The capacity for traffic is practically unlimited, even in the case of 

 canals with locks, provided the locks are properly designed. A lock 150 

 feet long by 20 feet broad, in a canal with a draft of six feet, will pass single 

 boats of 300 tons burden. Locks can be designed, and are in actual operation, 

 so as to be manoeuvrable in three minutes; but supposing that time were 

 doubled, then at the rate of 10 lockfuls of 300 tons per hour, the capability of 

 a single lock would be at the rate of 10x300x24 = 72,000 tons per day, or 

 over 25 million tons per annum. If a larger traffic recjuired to be accommo- 

 dated, it would be met either by increasing the speed at which the locks were 

 worked, or doubling their number. 



" 6. In the case of either State or private canals, unless worked by the 

 owners of the canal, there is no necessity for maintaining an enormous and 

 expensive apparatus or establishment, as all that can and wou'd be carried on 

 by separate agencies and by district capital, thus avoiding a large expenditure 

 in the first cost, and subsequent maintenance of rolling stock. 



" 7. The almost total absence of risk and reduction of damage to cargo in 

 transit to a minimum. In order to reap the fullest advantages of water car- 

 riage, however, it will be necessary, just as it is in all undertakings, not only 

 to construct the most perfect instrument possible, but also to take care that 

 it is most carefully and wisely managed afterwards." 



It must be borne in mind, too, that, from the national point of view, the 

 good influence of our system of canals and waterways has been, and is, 

 greater than the volume of trade dealt with or the dividend returns earned 

 might lead us to imagine. Their power of regulating freight charges on the 

 railways is considerably more than their absolute efficiency at any moment 

 would seem to imply ; for even potential competition has an immediate 

 influence on rates, as anyone conversant with railway problems can readily 

 illustrate from his own experience. In any comparison between railways 

 and canals it should never be forgotten that the former are regarded (as we 

 actually find them) at the highest point of modern efficiency, while canals 

 have to be considered (as we actually find them also) as a means of trans- 

 port using, in these countries at any rate, out-of-date sections, locks, barges. 



