Popular Science Monthly 



547 



did it with an artistry that was at once 

 a source of envy and a joy to behoki, the 

 fact that New York city was on an 

 island did not count so much against it. 

 Waterways were the chief hi;;hways. 

 And New York iiad the a(i\antage over 

 every other port on the Atlantic coast 

 in that one of its highways to 

 the interior was a water- 

 way that cut across 

 the Appalachian 

 system at sea 

 level. It was 

 in the days 

 f o 1 1 o w i n g 

 the opening 

 of the Erie 

 Canal, giv- 

 ing it access 

 to the Great 

 Lakes and 

 the heart of 

 the conti- 

 nent, that it 

 1 e a p e d 



ahead in the Much of New York city's freight is transferred to lighters 



rare for after having arrived on ships, and is then loaded upon 



carts. Millions are annually thus wasted in useless handling 

 commerce. 



The railroad, however, has demon- 

 strated that it can compete successfully 



with the interior waterways in getting 

 the products of the rich farms of the 

 Mississippi Valley to the seaboard. So 

 now, New York is handicapped by the 

 fact that it is surrounded by waterways 

 the most important of which cannot be 

 bridged for the transportion of freight. 

 Moreover, because of the 

 narrowness of Manhattan 

 Island, there is little 

 room for freight 

 yards, and little 

 opportunity 

 for getting 

 cars onto 

 the piers 

 alongside 

 the steam- 

 ships. Hav- 

 ing little 

 space on a 

 horizontal 

 plane, the 

 pressure has 

 shot the in- 

 habitantsup 

 into the air, 

 and down 

 into holes in the ground, where they work, 

 where they travel and where they live. 



New York's methods of handling freight at its terminals is discreditable to the largest 

 dty of the western hemisphere. Freight is handled and re-handled, transferred from ships to 

 lighters, and from lighters to carts. If we could cut the cost of handling the freight of the 

 country by only one cent per ton, it would mean a saving of $20,000,000 each year. Every 

 ton of package freight in the United States bears a charge of 74 cents for terminal handling 



