OoTOBEB 23, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



547 



been spent. The water in the lakes is deep 

 enough for the largest vessels, but the rivers 

 and straits connecting them naturally had 

 only from eight to twelve feet of water. 

 This has been increased through govern- 

 ment appropriations to twenty-one feet, 

 and nowthis body of Great Lakes forms one 

 of the grandest pieces of navigable water 

 known in the world. In 1889 twenty-five 

 million tons passed through this system and 

 in 1906 this had increased to seventy-six 

 million tons. In 1907 it was eighty-three 

 million tons and the increase wiU undoubt- 

 edly go on. In the Mississippi Valley two 

 hundred and eight million dollars has been 

 spent, but very little of it has gone for 

 navigation. The larger part has been spent 

 in jetties and dikes and so forth, necessary 

 to prevent the loss of property and of life. 

 So little has been done in the greater part 

 of the Mississippi Valley that the tonnage 

 has decreased during the past twenty years. 

 The Inland Waterways Commission has 

 done a most valuable work in showing the 

 possibilities of our navigable streams, lakes 

 and bays. It is to be hoped that congress 

 will make the appropriations necessary to 

 make this body permanent and that its 

 recommendations will receive favorable 

 consideration. In England, France and 

 Germany the waterways have received far 

 greater attention than here. Although 

 these countries are much smaller than the 

 United States a very much larger propor- 

 tion of the total tonnage passes through 

 the rivers and canals. We should take a 

 lesson from these nations and learn to give 

 this subject the proper amount of attention. 

 The larger use of our waterways will not 

 decrease the amount of railway traffic. The 

 railways now have more than they can do 

 and they have found great difficulty in 

 raising money sufficient to increase their 

 trackage and their transportation facilities. 

 Railroad transportation can only take 

 place over a pathway which has been espe- 



cially prepared and which has been laid 

 with steel rails. Water transportation does 

 not need this. A natural pathway is 

 ready and it is only necessary to provide 

 the vessels to carry the traffic. This makes 

 the cost of transportation by water very^ 

 much less than that by land. The initial 

 cost is less and the cost of maintenance is 

 less. Navigation has decreased during the 

 past few years in many sections because 

 the streams are shallow and the loads car- 

 ried have been very small. As the rail- 

 roads have reached into the districts for- 

 merly served by boats, the rapidity of trans- 

 portation and the possibility of carrying 

 large loads have decreased the cost below 

 that of water service. If these streams, 

 however, can be given the proper depth so 

 that larger vessels can be used and greater 

 loads carried, the transportation by water 

 will be resumed. The whole question of 

 water transportation belongs to the engi- 

 neer. Whatever has been done in the past 

 has been planned and carried out by him 

 and all improvements in the future must 

 be his work. 



CONCLUSIONS 



I have presented in a very imperfect way 

 the present state of our natural resources 

 and have suggested some of the steps which 

 should be taken to conserve them. There 

 is nothing original in this. The facts have 

 been gathered from government reports 

 and papers written by experts in each of 

 the several divisions of this question. The 

 point which I had in mind during the 

 preparation of the paper and to which I 

 wish to give especial emphasis is that this 

 work of conservation is the work of the 

 engineer. I am inclined to think that in 

 some cases the statements in regard to the 

 destruction of our natural resources have 

 been overdrawn and that they will not be 

 totally exhausted in as short a period as 

 some seem to believe, but there is no doubt 



