CANALS. 



95 



mainly of coal, bricks, timber, sand, turf, oats, flour, grain, porter 

 (which is 25 per cent, of all traffic on the Shannon and Maigue Navi- 

 gations), and such agricultural requirements as artificial manures, grass 

 seeds, etc., besides a fair proportion of " general cargo." In a country 

 like Ireland whose soils vary so much in kind, there being large districts of 

 moory land, heavy clays, shallow soils lying immediately upon limestone 

 plateaux, and friable loams on basaltic or igneous formations, the farm 

 produce is affected very diversely by the varying conditions of sun-heat and 

 rainfall in different seasons, so that it is not unusual to have a heavy root 

 crop in one district while in others it is of poor quality or scanty in bulk. 

 In the absence of cheap transport for bulky crops such as potatoes or 

 turnips, the local glut or scarcity rules the market prices ; so that the profits 

 of agriculture are subject to more violent fluctuations than would obtain if 

 there were better facilities for distribution. The railway freights are neces- 

 sarily disproportionate to the value of such products. However, since the 

 " inward " exceeds very largely the " outward " traffic to seaports by reason 

 of the scarcity of manufacturing industries in Ireland, it is, perhaps, worth 

 consideration whether lower rates for such class of goods might not remu- 

 nerate the carrying companies by utilizing the empty return wagons. Here, 

 certainly, an efficient inland navigation service would serve the farmer. The 

 same general classes of commodities, as quoted above, are found in the 

 traffic-lists of continental waterways. Of the freight brought to Berlin for 

 instance, in 1890, 49 per cent, consisted according to the official returns, of 

 stone and brick, 21 per cent, of lime, earth, sand, etc., 10 per cent, of wood, 

 7 per cent, of coal, and 6 per cent, of grain. Again, an official analysis made 

 some years ago of the traffic carried on French canals gives the following 

 results : construction materials and minerals, 28 per cent. ; agricultural pro 

 duce, 14.4 per cent. ; timber, 8.6 per cent. ; metals, 7 per cent. ; manure 

 and accessories, 5.3 per cent. ; and so on. A consideration of the 

 character of this traffic makes it evident that the province of the water- 

 way in transportation is a narrower one than that q^ the railway. The 

 latter naturally takes all passenger traffic, all perishable goods, nearly all 

 " smalls " traffic, and practically all live stock, and as it happens, these are 

 precisely the classes of traffic which are most remunerative on railways. It 

 is significant, by the way, of the influence of waterway rates on railway rates, 

 that while goods rates have been reduced very considerably within the past 

 two decades, passenger fares, in which there is practically no water compe- 

 tition, have declined to a far less extent (except, of course, in urban areas, 

 where the competition of the tram system has been felt). This is a pheno- 

 menon observable in every country where there is genuine competition 

 either between waterways and railways, or by railways in^er se. The fol- 

 lowing Table for the United States will serve to illustrate this tendency :^ 



