202 HAUPT—DEEPER NAVIGABLE CHANNELS. [April 2, 
feet length and forty or more feet draft would be upon us, but this 
economic ideal cannot be realized until some better method is 
developed for the creation and maintenance of much deeper chan- 
nels. To meet this demand for deeper water more powerful 
dredges are building, in the hope of combatting successfully with 
the ceaseless activities of the bar-building elements, by sporadic 
mechanical devices, costing large sums to operate and offering 
serious obstacles to navigation by their presence in narrow chan- 
nels. With the exception of Port Royal, with twenty-one feet ; 
Gedney’s Channel, with twenty-three feet ; the Golden Gate, with 
thirty-two feet, and the Columbia Bar, with nineteen feet, the nat- 
ural depth of scour over our alluvial bars seldom exceeds fifteen 
feet, and is more frequently limited to from three to twelve ; while 
a modern vessel, fully laden, may draw thirty-two, and should have 
a channel depth of from thirty-five to forty feet for safe passage over 
a rough bar at low water. Hence the urgent demands made upon 
the national treasury for larger appropriations, that at least the most 
important of our railroad and commercial terminals may utilize 
these economies in transportation. 
For the forty-four years prior to 1866, when our commerce was 
carried in much lighter-draft vessels, the total expenditure for 
waterway improvements was but $14,990,170; but between 1867 
and 1901 they expanded to $332,487,627—-making a grand total 
to that date of $347,477,897, to which should be added the appro- 
priations of the last Congress of about $60,000,000 more, thus 
swelling the aggregate to over $400,000,000. In reporting the last 
bill the Chairman of the River and Harbor Committee stated that 
‘the total amount which would be required for the completion of 
projects for river and harbor works . . . now considerably 
exceeds $300,000,000.’’ If but ten per cent. of this sum can 
be secured annually it is evident that our commerce must ‘* drag its 
slow length along’’ for many years, while the increase in the de- 
mand for greater facilities cannot be met unless greater efficiency 
may be secured in the methods in vogue. 
During the score of years succeeding 1867 the average expendi- 
tures were $4,480,000, but soon thereafter, when deeper channels 
were demanded and the use of the submerged and twin jetties 
supplemented by dredging became the main reliance, the annual 
average reached nearly $13,000,000, with a rapidly increasing ratio. 
In the past quarter century the estimates and expenditures at only 
