DEVELOPMENT OF A MERCHANT MARINE AND COMATERCE. 239 



discretion any new expenditures of money for enlargement of any of the three facilities. 

 This does not mean that extensive works and improvements in the matter of port facilities 

 are not warranted but merely tliat in each individual case there are special problems requiring 

 study and analysis from all standpoints ; and the sooner we give up idealistic statements and 

 glittering generalities and come down to an analysis of facts and figures in special cases, the 

 better. 



The President : — It seems desirable to add that the contribution which has just been 

 presented in abstract was prepared by Admiral Harris, who, as Chief of the Bureau of 

 Yards and Docks in the Navy Department, and subsequently as General Manager of the 

 Fleet Corporation of the Shipping Board and in charge of very important port development 

 work, speaks with authority on the subject. 



Mr. Charles Evan Fowler (Communicated) : — The paper by Admiral Rousseau is 

 such a thorough and comprehensive one that to properly discuss it would require much time 

 and study. Therefore the writer will only attempt to call attention to some few points that 

 should be most carefully considered, and some others that should be introduced as pertinent. 



The seven postulates of the Montreal Harbor Commission, as given in their original 

 report, cover the situation as to any important harbor most comprehensively, but the first two 

 should be repeated here. 



"The ports that are doing the biggest business, and doing it most eflficiently, are the 

 ports that have kept their facilities ahead of actual requirements." 



"The ports that have remained stationary or lost prestige are those which neglected to 

 provide facilities before business was forced to seek elsewhere the same facilities provided 

 by rival terminals. Business follows the facilities." 



The writer spent some four years, as an engineer member of the Seattle Harbor Com- 

 mission, which evolved the present Port of Seattle scheme, to overcome the handicap imposed 

 by private and railway ownership of ocean terminals, and he sees no reason, from the work- 

 ing out of the Seattle plan, to change his views, that the port authority must be divorced 

 from any connection with municipal government, or politics if you please. The detail develop- 

 ment of the port has also in the main been most satisfactory; and such things as the great 

 jetty piers, as built, have undoubtedly met with great approval by all authorities on ports. 



The whole project has, however, demonstrated that it is impossible to divorce the hin- 

 terland facilities, the port proper, and the harbor. The port will be a failure if the hinter- 

 land does not produce and consume products conducive to ocean commerce, and it must have 

 the necessary connecting or feeder railways. Then, too, our railway managers must be of the 

 broad-gauge type who can sense the welfare of their roads in terms of cooperation with the 

 ports they serve. They must study such examples as the Puerto Mexico, Salina Cruz ports 

 and railway, and the railway and port facilities of the Argentine. Such details, for exam- 

 ple, as the roof doors of box cars to facilitate loading and unloading must be copied, if per- 

 force we cannot attain to efficiency in any other manner. The steamship operator, on the other 

 hand, must equip his ships with cargo booms and freight-handling machinery like the ships of 

 the old American-Hawaiian Line, to supplement dock cranes, and also to serve such ports as 

 have no dock cranes or freight-handling machinery. 



The table on page 231 of the paper makes it easy to pick out those features of ocean 

 commerce that cost the most in percentage in the handling of the world commerce. We can 



