200 HAUPT—DEEPER NAVIGABLE CHANNELS. [April 2, 
The question, therefore, has its humane as well as its financial and 
scientific aspects. It is the aim of the engineer and the capitalist 
to reduce the cost of transportation to a minimum for the general 
welfare of mankind, 
The great improvements which have been effected in the railways 
of the world have resulted in a rapid reduction in the average rates 
of freight, which are still falling. Roadmakers have caught the 
infection and are mending their ways as rapidly as the means 
become available. Sailing vessels are transformed into the schooner 
type of greater dimensions and are designed to be handled by 
smaller crews, so that it may be said they represent the cheapest 
class of carriers. The steamer also is being greatly enlarged in its 
capacity with the same end in view, but it has not and cannot reach ; 
the limit of its economic possibilities because of the absence of 
adequate channels at its terminals. 
These great evolutions in transportation have been made possible 
in the United States by the concentration of mind, money and ma- 
terials, working in harmony and resulting in a system of overland 
movements which is without a rival. It is the outgrowth of private 
capital, employed to develop limited areas, but gradually consoli- 
dated into trunk lines, and which finally, assisted by the National 
Government, united the two oceans. The merging of these great 
interests still continues and the end is not yet. These bands - 
of steel have enabled our excess of production to reach the seaboard 
and be distributed to foreign markets, and it may not. be out of 
order to glance very briefly at the magnitude of this movement. 
Thanks to a beneficent Providence and the industry and intelli- 
gence of our people, our exports exceed our imports by an amount 
greater than that of all other nations. Their increase within a. 
generation is startling. While the population has doubled in 
the past thirty years, the per capita of money has increased from 
$17.50 to $28.66.1 The number of artisans has increased 2.7 
times, while his average earnings have risen from $387 to $500 per 
capita per annum. ‘The capital employed has expanded fivefold 
and the value of the output more than threefold. In consequence 
the per capita of our exports has increased in this same period from 
$7.29 to $18.81, of which the largest part is food-stuffs. 
The increase in agricultural exports was over 300 per cent., and 
that of manufactures 750 per cent., so that this country heads the 
10. P. Austin, Chief of the Bureau of Statistics, in Zhe World’s Work. 
