THE COMMERCIAL POSSIBILITIES OF 

 SHALLOW STREAMS' 



By JOHN L. MATHEWS 



II ] WE been asked to speak to you reason to believe, and where the sit- 



here to-day on a topic which has been nation does exist, the railroads, in most 



of vital interest to me for several places, are now only too willing to co- 



^ears and one in the solution of which I operate with steamboat lines that are 



mi happy to sav we are now making operated with the same sort of system 



apid progress You are all of you famil- and the same sane engineering deyelop- 



ar with the efforts that have been made ment that characterizes the operation ot 



o arouse public sentiment in the mat- the railroad. Every once in a while, 



er of securing congressional aid in some one, usually the secretary of the 



deepening our shallow rivers ; and, more commercial association in some thriving 



mportant than deepening them, in es- river city, is seized with the idea of put- 



tablishing definite depths in their chan- ting the rivers to use. A banquet, with 



nels and permanency in the course of rousing speeches; a subscription paper 



the water. Deep waterways are a very passed around, a collection of fifty or 



necessary thing ; but whenever we have one hundred thousand dollars in 



gone into Congress or have taken dele- pledges, the purchase of an old- 



gates down the river to see our needs, fashioned, wooden-hulled, stern-wheel 



they have asked us. "Why don't you use steamboat, and the experimental carry- 



the channels that you have now?" ; Mr. ing of a few tons of cargo end only too 



Burton and some' of those who follow quickly in the snagging of the boat, 



him having even gone to the length of its destruction by fire, or the failure of 



-uggesting that we need a law forbid- the enterprise because of the cost of 



ding the railroads to compete with the maintaining the old rattle-trap system 



rivers by cutting rates. I need hardly of the days of slavery. 

 to suggest to you, gentlemen, that such We are face to face with the problem 



a law proposed in Congress would do of utilizing our rivers. There is no 



more harm to the deep-waterway move- need for me here to convince you of 



ment, and would tend more quickly to that fact. You have heard from many 



make our campaign ridiculous in the great transportation experts, and among 



eyes of the people, than anything else them James J. Hill, that the railways 



that can be done for it. We do not cannot carry the freight w T hich is of- 



I any protection from the railroads fered, and that their capacity to do so 



on our rivers, except that in individual grows less in increasing ratio with the 



states we need the right of eminent do- enormous development of our country. 



main for the- u^c of steamboat com- You have heard from Hon. John Bar- 



pank-s to enable them to secure a foot- rett, than whom no man is better in- 



hold n tin- brink of the river in places formed of our needs in South America, 



re the railroad has bought every that only by the establishment of water 



f<>t of land to prevent steamers tying transportation in our little streams can 



up ;it the bank. This contingency, I am we hope to revive trade with the Latin 



happ\ to :r , i-. not so frequent as some republics. Many of you had stood, as I 



government departments would give us have stood, on the docks of the city of 



livcrcd before the Southern Commercial Congress in Washington, D. C. 



mijc r 7. 



32 



