30 INLAND NAVIGATION AND BARGE CONSTRUCTION 



nection with the dredging of the Mississippi some years ago, and I have been interested in the 

 references by the last speaker to the enormous quantity of mud which the Mississippi holds. 

 Engineers were having a large dredge designed to handle 12,000 cubic yards of Mis- 

 sissippi mud an hour, to cost half a million dollars, and when we got the dredge down to the 

 Mississippi River we did not find any mud at all. That is the nature of the Mississippi. If you 

 design for certain conditions, the next week they are different. A flood comes down and takes 

 the mud away and leaves you with sand. Fortunately the mud came back, and we got to 

 work six months afterwards. The Mississippi Valley does not run through a toy country 

 which you can walk across in a day's journey. It is a tremendous territory, and you find, going 

 down the river from St. Louis to New Orleans, or any substantial part of that journey, 

 so many changing conditions regarding climate and mud and sand bars that you cannot lay 

 down the law and say this is the boat or the other fellow's is the boat adapted to use on that 

 river. 



I am disposed to take issue with Mr. Bernhard when he throws discredit upon the old 

 Mississippi steamboat captains and engineers when they prefer to stick to their own types. 

 When we are young and active and full of beans we come over to this country — I did it my- 

 self — and we go right ahead into everything and tell the people here : "You don't know any- 

 thing about what you are doing ; you are a lot of silly asses. Why don't you do it the way 

 we do it in Europe?" In line with that, I will confess that I went to a contractor who was 

 building several dredges, which cost him more than half a million dollars, and I said : "Your 

 plant is no damned use. I will change it all. Here is a dredge I am building for the Dela- 

 ware, which will make your plant look like thirty cents." He was affable and pleasant, but 

 did not help me out. He did not say : "Go ahead, and God bless you." He did the opposite. 

 A man must be tactful. You get a lot of antagonism in drawing ahead that way. It is better 

 to work with a man than to antagonize him. I have found in this river navigation business 

 that it is much better to take the man who has spent all his life in work on the river with you 

 as far as you can. Of course, his judgment is not to be relied upon outside of his own line of 

 work, but he does know something about conditions which directly affect the line of work in 

 which he is engaged. 



Mr. Bernhard is quite wrong in stating that the naval architects in this country have ig- 

 nored this river navigation problem. That is a serious mistake to make. They have done 

 nothing of the kind. The naval architect is a man who has a regular line of business, he 

 has a staff in his office to provide for, and he must make a living. Naturally, he goes after 

 the living that is nearest to him, and he is not spending his time walking up and down the 

 banks of the Mississippi River telling the shipping people they do not know what they are 

 talking about. He must have problems stated to him by the shipowner or the navigation 

 man. There is an obligation on him — if he has a new thing, to put it forward to help his 

 client ; but wherever there is trade in this country to make business for the naval architect, the 

 naval architect has been a live wire, and you have only to go to the St. Lawrence and the 

 Great Lakes and the canals to see the great trade which has been done in the Lake boats, 

 and to realize how much has been accomplished in the cause of river and canal navigation 

 by the naval architect. 



The curious thing is that Mr. Bernhard is only repeating in the Mississippi — and all 

 credit to him — what has already been done in other parts of this country, not only in the type 

 of barge, in the way he constructs it and the methods of propulsion, but in other features — 

 that has all been done before. I have been instrumental in bringing to this country twenty or 



