54 HAUPT— NATION AND THE WATERWAYS. [April 22. 



State and ex-U. S. Senator, P. C. Knox, in an address delivered 

 February 12, 1908, said: 



" When the Government assumed charge and control of the navigable 

 streams of the interior it entered into a practical contract with the States 

 and communities bordering these streams that their waterways should be 

 improved to their highest capacity. The States were thereby prevented from 

 improving the streams themselves. Corporate enterprise was forbidden to 

 undertake the canalization of important stretches and fix the cost of their 

 works and franchises on the traffic. The Federal Government has made its 

 formal and deliberate declaration that it will do this work. That necessarily 

 involves that it will make the improvements adequate to modern needs and 

 possibilities. To do any less would be a mockery and breach of good faith." 



Thus, it is manifest that the federal government has assumed 

 charge and control of the waterways of the states, but without 

 formal agreement, and has paralyzed the former corporate or local 

 initiative as commercial enterprises, and in consequence of the ina- 

 bility of the national treasury to meet even a small fraction of the 

 demands upon it for this class of public works, has added to the 

 general congestion of the transportation and increased the cost.^ 



The great relative loss in water-borne commerce during the past 

 half century may be ascribed in large part to the rapid increase in 

 the mileage and capacity of railroads which have erroneously 

 regarded waterways as competitors and waged a war of extermina- 

 tion upon them; as well as to the policy on the part of some of the 

 states and localities to tacitly prefer appropriations from the national 

 treasury rather than from their own revenues and thus apparently 

 sanction the forfeiture of sovereignty over these works, to an 

 extrinsic authority, having no constitutional rights to exercise them. 



Even if it were constitutional for the general government to 

 assume and control the improvements of all the rivers and harbors 

 of the several states, it has been demonstrated time and again that 

 it is impracticable to secure the necessary appropriations from the 

 general treasury, necessary to meet the demands of a rapidly ex- 

 panding commerce, which furnishes a tonnage increasing five-fold 

 faster than the facilities for transporting it. With all sections 



'At the closing session of the 60th Congress the appropriation was only 

 nine-tenths of one per cent., while 60.5 per cent, was for militarism and its 

 sequences. 



