100 



CANALS. 



far-sighted zeal on the part of the Government for the development of inland 

 navigation. In spite of the great extension of railways in Germany, the 

 traffic on the waterways is growing absolutely and relatively. It rose 

 between 1875 and 1885 from 21 per cent, of the total traffic to 23 per cent. ; 

 and while the increase of goods traffic on the railways amounted in the same 

 decade to 52 per cent., that on the waterways reached 66 per cent. " The 

 German Government has," writes Mr. Gastrell,* Commercial Attache to H. 

 M. Embassy at Berlin, " systematically tried to establish in this country a 

 combined net work of waterways and railways ; and they have recognised 

 the -practicability of both working well together, the canals taking the 

 bulky fart of the heavy traffic which does not require rapid trarisport^ 

 Quite a remarkable instance of the truth that the growth of a canal trade 

 may be accompanied by an increase in the traffic and profits of a competing 

 railway, is afforded by the canalization of the Main from Mayence to Frank- 

 fort. The Main improvement works were completed in 1886. The follow- 

 ing table gives the tonnage by rail and by water for the three years before 

 and for the three years succeeding the canalization of the Main :--' 



The moral of this table is that coincident with an increase of traffic on an 

 improved waterway there can be an enormously increased freight on a com- 

 peting railroad. The great gains in the tonnage of the railroad since the 

 canalization of the Main as compared with the gains before is seen if the 

 yearly increase is noted. Nor was the increase merely temporary. I have 

 obtained the most recent figures available both of railway and water traffic, 

 and they show a practically uninterrupted increase of freight on each route ■. 



* Foreign Office Report on the Development of Commercial Industrial Maritime, and 

 Traffic Interests in Germany, 1871 to i8g8. 



t There was a strike of railway and canal operatives in this year, which explains the 

 relative decline in increase of tonnage both for waterways and railways. 



% Railway returns for 1300 not yet available, but an estimate puts them at 2,500,000 tons. 

 I am indebted for these figures to my friend, Dr. Moritz T. Bonn, of Frankfort-on-Main. 



