NAVIGATION RESOURCES OF AMERICAN WATERWAYS 573 



sponding figures for the railways were 410, 

 ooo tons carried one mile per mile of line 

 in 1875, and 800,000 in 10x15. ''"lie relative 

 importance of the traffic of the railways and 

 waterways in Germany is shown by the fact 

 that twenty-live per cent, of the total ton 

 mileage of rail and water traffic in 1905 was 

 uater borne, and seventy-five per cent, 

 moved upon rails. Thirty years earlier the 

 waterways had twenty-one per cent, and tin- 

 railroads had seventy-nine per cent, of the 

 Ci unbilled ton mileage. 



I hese brief references to England. France, 

 and Germany suffice to show that the United 

 States has as yet done less than has been 

 done by her leading industrial and commer- 

 cial rivals in the development and use of 

 inland waterways, if we except as of course 

 we ought the chain of Great Lakes which 

 have no counterpart in any other country. 

 Whether it is desirable that the United 

 States should follow the example of France 

 and Germany as regards inland water trans- 

 portation is a question to which the Ameri- 

 can people are now giving serious thought. 

 There can be no uncertainty as to the im- 

 portance of the transportation services per- 

 formed by our coastwise shipping, and by 

 the fleet operated on the Great Lakes. The 

 coastwise and Great Lakes traffic is rapidly 

 growing; but upon our canals and many 

 of our rivers, traffic languishes or declines. 



Is it wise, it may be asked, for the United 

 States to spend money in constructing canals 

 and improving our rivers, and if so, under 

 what conditions and to what extent? This 

 is too large a question for one to attempt 

 to answer fully in a short paper, the primary 

 purpose of which is to present data rather 

 than to draw conclusions ; but some indica- 

 tion as to what policy may best be adopted 

 may be given by calling attention briefly to 

 the causes that account for the decline in 

 canal and river traffic and by stating certain 

 facts which seem to indicate that well- 

 developed inland waterways may as-iM 

 largely in the future economic progress of 

 our country. 



The causes accounting for the decline in 

 the traffic upon our canals and rivers have 

 been so clearly stated by the President in 

 his address and in liis special message of 

 February _>'>. Ko8, transmitting t<> C'ongr. - 

 the preliminary report of the Inland Water- 

 ways Commission, and the same subject has 

 hem so fully presented in that report that 

 a detailed di-cn^ion of thos c causes s, cms 

 unnecessary. 



The primary reason for the decline in the 

 use of canals of such small dimensions and 

 river channels so shallow as to permit the 

 use only of craft capable of transporting 

 IOO to 200 tons of cargo, is to he found in 

 the very success which the railway of the 

 United 5 have had in providing cheap 



transportation for heavy and bulky com- 

 modities. In no other country of the world 

 have rail transportation costs hern reduced 



to such a low figure. I lie ability of our 

 railroads to handle this class of t rattle so 

 economically has resulted not only from the 

 genius of the Americal people in the use of 

 machinery to do man's heavy work, but 

 aNo, and more largely, from the fact that 

 by far the greater -hare of the tonnage of 

 American railroads consists of such bulky 

 commodities as coal, iron, ore, lumber, and 

 grain, which can be handled not only in car- 

 load lots, but in train-load^, and which, 

 from the very size of our country, must be 

 moved long distances in order to reach the 

 manufacturing centers of the United Statc> 

 and the primary markets within and with- 

 out our borders. 



In many other countries it has been found 

 more economical to do the heavier trans 

 portation work by making large use of 

 terways, and to develop the railway trattie 

 more particularly with reference and this 

 is especially the case with England, France, 

 and Germany to the speedy movement and 

 schedule delivery of parcels, packages, and 

 general commodity freight. This organiza- 

 tion of the transportation service by rail 

 is possible where there is a division of 

 the transportation work between the rail- 

 roads and waterways, and it results in the 

 close co-ordination of railroad freight traffic 

 with the wholesale and retail trade. It 

 enables merchants and manufacturers to re- 

 duce capital costs and warehousing expei 

 to a minimum. It meets the needs of densely 

 populated and highly developed industrial 

 countries such as France and Germany, and 

 especially of such a country as Great Britain, 

 for, although the inland waterways of Great 

 Britain are, as a whole, less carefully de- 

 veloped than are those of France and Ger- 

 many, a large share of the domestic com 

 merce of the United Kingdom is carried 

 by water. The navigation services which 

 most countries can secure only by mean 

 inland waterways, the island of Great Brit- 

 ain, with its 3,900 miles of tidal coast, ob- 

 tains from the surrounding ocean the best 

 of all highways. 



Such an organization of the business of 

 transportation as has been worked out in 

 the three European countries just m. n 

 tioned, docs not result in as low a\erag. 

 freight rates by rail as prevail in the United 

 States; but the cost of wholesale and re 

 tail distribution and of many manufacturing 

 acti\ities are undoubtedly less than they 

 would be were the people of Eup.pe s, rved 

 almost entirely by railroads and not by rail- 

 roads and waterways Our dependence upon 

 railroads, almost exclusively, for the m< 

 ment of bulky commodities long disja: 

 even at low average rates, while wc_ at 

 the same time neglect the development and 

 of our inland waterways, does not nec- 

 essarily mean that we have organized our 

 work of production and distribution in the 

 most economical manner. Indeed, there 

 can be little doubt that as social and indus- 



