WATERWAYS IN THE UNITED STATES
In some respects conditions in the United States compare with those of
Continental Europe, for they suggest alike powerful streams, artificial
canals constructed on (as a rule) flat or comparatively flat surfaces,
and the possibilities of traffic in large quantities for transport
over long distances before they can reach a seaport. In other respects
the comparison is less with Continental than with British conditions,
inasmuch as, for the last half century at least, the American railways
have been free to compete with the waterways, and fair play has been
given to the exercise of economic forces, with the result that, in
the United States as in the United Kingdom, the railways have fully
established their position as the factors in inland transport best
suited to the varied requirements of trade and commerce of to-day,
while the rivers and canals (I do not here deal with the Great Lakes,
which represent an entirely different proposition) have played a rôle
of steadily diminishing importance.
The earliest canal built in the United States was that known as
the Erie Canal. It was first projected in 1768, with the idea of
establishing a through route by water between Lake Erie and the River
Hudson at Albany, whence the boats or barges employed would be able
to reach the port of New York. The Act for its construction was not
passed, however, by the Provincial Legislature of the State of New York
until 1817. The canal itself was opened for traffic in 1825. It had a
total length from Cleveland to Albany of 364 miles, included therein
being some notable engineering work in the way of aqueducts, etc.
At the date in question there were four North Atlantic seaports,
namely, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, all of about
equal importance. Boston, however, had appeared likely to take the
lead, by reason both of her comparatively dense population and of her
substantial development of manufactures. Philadelphia was also then
somewhat in advance of New York in trade and population. The effect of
the Erie Canal, however, was to concentrate all the advantages, for
the time being, on New York. Thanks to the canal, New York secured the
domestic trade of a widespread territory in the middle west, while
her rivals could not possess themselves of like facilities, because
of the impracticability of constructing canals to cross the ranges
of mountains separating them from the valley of the Mississippi and
the basin of the Great Lakes--ranges broken only by the Hudson and
the Mohawk valleys, of which the constructors of the Erie Canal had
already taken advantage. So New York, with its splendid harbour, made
great progress alike in trade, wealth, and population, completely
outdistancing her rivals, and becoming, as a State, "the Empire
State," and, as a city, "the financial and commercial centre of the
Western Hemisphere."
While, again, the Erie Canal was "one of the most efficient factors"
in bringing about these results, it was also developing the north-west
by giving an outlet to the commerce of the Great Lakes, and during
the second quarter of the nineteenth century it represented what has
been well described as "the most potent influence of American progress
and civilisation." Not only did the traffic it carried increase from
1,250,000 tons, in 1837, to 3,000,000 tons in 1847, but it further
inspired the building of canals in other sections of the United States.
In course of time the artificial waterways of that country represented
a total length of 5,000 miles.
With the advent of the railways there came revolutionary changes
which were by no means generally appreciated at first. The cost of
the various canals had been defrayed mostly by the different States,
and, though financial considerations had thus been more readily met,
the policy pursued had committed the States concerned to the support
of the canals against possible competition. When, therefore, "private
enterprise" introduced railways, in which the doom of the canals was
foreseen, there was a wild outburst of indignant protest. The money of
the taxpayers, it was said, had been sunk in building the canals, and,
if the welfare of these should be prejudiced by the railways, every
taxpayer in the State would suffer. When it was seen that the railways
had come to stay, the demand arose that, while passengers might
travel by rail, the canals should have the exclusive right to convey
merchandise.
The question was even discussed by the Legislature of the State of
New York, in 1857, whether the railways should not be prevented from
carrying goods at all, or, alternatively, whether heavy taxes should
not be imposed on goods traffic carried by rail in order to check the
considerable tendency then being shown for merchandise to go by rail
instead of by canal, irrespective of any difference in rates. The
railway companies were further accused of conspiring to "break down
those great public works upon which the State has spent forty years
of labour," and so active was the campaign against them--while it
lasted--that one New York paper wrote:--"The whole community is aroused
as it never was before."
Some of the laws which had been actually passed to protect the
State-constructed canals against the railways were, however, repealed
in 1851, and the agitation itself was not continued beyond 1857, from
which year the railways had free scope and opportunity to show what
they could do. The contest was vigorous and prolonged, but the railways
steadily won.
In the first instance the Erie Canal had a depth of 4 feet, and could
be navigated only by 30-ton boats. In 1862 it was deepened to 7 feet,
in order that boats of 240 tons, with a capacity of 8,000 tons of
wheat, could pass, the cost of construction being thus increased from
$7,000,000 to $50,000,000. Then, in 1882, all tolls were abolished, and
the canal has since been maintained out of the State treasury. But how
the traffic on the New York canals as a whole (including the Erie, the
Oswego, the Champlain, etc.) has declined, in competition with the
railroads, is well shown by the following table:--[10]
+-------------+---------------------------+-------------------+
| Year. | Total Traffic on New York | Percentage on |
| | Canals and Railroads. | Canals only. |
+-------------+---------------------------+-------------------+
| | Tons. | Per cent. |
| 1860 | 7,155,803 | 65 |
| 1870 | 17,488,469 | 35 |
| 1880 | 29,943,633 | 21 |
| 1890 | 56,327,661 | 9.3 |
| 1900 | 84,942,988 | 4.1 |
| 1903 | 93,248,299 | 3.9 |
+-------------+---------------------------+-------------------+
The falling off in the canal traffic has been greatest in just those
heavy or bulky commodities that are generally assumed to be specially
adapted for conveyance by water. Of the flour and grain, for instance,
received at New York, less than 10 per cent. in 1899, and less than 8
per cent. in 1900, came by the Erie Canal.
The experiences of the New York canals have been fully shared by other
canals in other States. Of the sum total of 5,000 miles of canals
constructed, 2,000 had been abandoned by 1890 on the ground that the
traffic was insufficient to cover working expenses. Since then most
of the remainder have shared the same fate, one of the last of the
survivors, the Delaware and Hudson, being converted into a railway
a year or two ago. In fact the only canals in the United States
to-day, besides those in the State of New York, whose business is
sufficiently regular to warrant the inclusion of their traffic in the
monthly reports of the Government are the Chesapeake and Delaware
(connecting Chesapeake and Delaware Bays, and having an annual traffic
of about 700,000 tons, largely lumber); and the Chesapeake and Ohio
(from Cumberland to Georgetown, owned by the State of Maryland, and
transporting coal almost exclusively, the amount depending on the state
of congestion of traffic on the railroads).
It is New York that has been most affected by this decline in American
canals. When the railways began to compete severely with the Erie
Canal, New York's previous supremacy over rival ports in the Eastern
States was seriously threatened. Philadelphia and Baltimore, and
various smaller ports also, started to make tremendous advance. Then
the Gulf ports--notably New Orleans and Galveston--were able to
capture a good deal of ocean traffic that might otherwise have passed
through New York. Not only do the railway lines to those ports have
the advantage of easy grades, so that exceptionally heavy train-loads
can be handled with ease, and not only is there no fear of snow or
ice blocks in winter, but the improvements effected in the ports
themselves--as I had the opportunity of seeing and judging, in the
winter of 1902-3, during a visit to the United States--have made these
southern ports still more formidable competitors of New York. While,
therefore, the trade of the United States has undergone great expansion
of late years, that proportion of it which passes through the port of
New York has seriously declined. "In less than ten years," says a
pamphlet on "The Canal System of New York State," issued by the Canal
Improvement State Committee, City of New York, "Pennsylvania or some
other State may be the Empire State, which title New York has held
since the time of the Erie Canal."
So a movement has been actively promoted in New York State for the
resuscitation of the Erie and other canals there, with a view to
assuring the continuance of New York's commercial supremacy, and
giving her a better chance--if possible--of competing with rivals
now flourishing at her expense. At first a ship canal between New
York and Lake Erie was proposed; but this idea has been rejected as
impracticable. Finally, the Legislature of the State of New York
decided on spending $101,000,000 on enlarging the Erie and other
canals in the State, so as to give them a depth of 12 feet, and allow
of the passage of 1,000-ton barges, arrangements being also made for
propulsion by electric or steam traction.
In addition to this particular scheme, "there are," says Mr F. H.
Dixon, Professor of Economics, Dartmouth College, in an address
on "Competition between Water and Railway Transportation Lines in
the United States," read by him before the St Louis Railway Club,
and reported in the _Engineering News_ (New York) of March 22,
1906, "many other proposals for canals in different sections of the
country, extending all the way from projects that have some economic
justification to the crazy and impracticable schemes of visionaries."
But the general position in regard to canal resuscitation in the United
States does not seem to be very hopeful, judging from a statement made
by Mr Carnegie--once an advocate of the proposed Pittsburg-Lake Erie
Canal--before the Pittsburg Chamber of Commerce in 1898.
"Such has been the progress of railway development," he said, "that
if we had a canal to-day from Lake Erie through the Ohio Valley to
Beaver, free of toll, we could not afford to put boats on it. It is
cheaper to-day to transfer the ore to 50-ton cars, and bring it to our
works at Pittsburg over our railway, than it would be to bring it by
canal."
Turning from artificial to natural waterways in the United States, I
find the story of the Mississippi no less instructive.
[Illustration: A CARGO BOAT ON THE MISSISSIPPI.
[_To face page_ 110.
]
This magnificent stream has, in itself, a length of 2,485 miles. But
the Missouri is really only an upper prolongation of the same river
under another name, and the total length of the two, from mouth to
source, is 4,190 miles, of which the greater distance is navigable.
The Mississippi and its various tributaries drain, altogether, an area
of 1,240,000 square miles, or nearly one-third of the territory of the
United States. If any great river in the world had a chance at all
of holding its own against the railroads as a highway of traffic it
should, surely, be the Mississippi, to which British theorists ought
to be able to point as a powerful argument in support of their general
proposition concerning the advantages of water over rail-transport. But
the actual facts all point in the other direction.
The earliest conditions of navigation on the Mississippi are well shown
in the following extract from an article published in the _Quarterly
Review_ of March 1830, under the heading, "Railroads and Locomotive
Steam-carriages":--
"As an example of the difficulties of internal navigation, it may
be mentioned that on the great river Mississippi, which flows at
the rate of 5 or 6 miles an hour, it was the practice of a certain
class of boatmen, who brought down the produce of the interior to New
Orleans, to break up their boats, sell the timber, and afterwards
return home slowly by land; and a voyage up the river from New
Orleans to Pittsburg, a distance of about 2,000 miles, could hardly
be accomplished, with the most laborious efforts, within a period of
four months. But the uncertain and limited influence, both of the
wind and the tide, is now superseded by a new agent, which in power
far surpassing the raging torrent, is yet perfectly manageable, and
acts with equal efficacy in any direction.... Steamboats of every
description, and on the most approved models, ply on all the great
rivers of the United States; the voyage from New Orleans to Pittsburg,
which formerly occupied four months, is accomplished with ease in
fifteen or twenty days, and at the rate of not less than 5 miles an
hour."
Since this article in the _Quarterly Review_ was published, enormous
sums of money have been spent on the Mississippi--partly with a view
to the prevention of floods, but partly, also, to improve the river
for the purposes of navigation. Placed in charge of a Mississippi
Commission and of the Chief of Engineers in the United States Army,
the river has been systematically surveyed; special studies and
reports have been drawn up on every possible aspect of its normal or
abnormal conditions and circumstances; the largest river dredges in
the world have been employed to ensure an adequate depth of the river
bed; engineering works in general on the most complete scale have been
carried out--in fact, nothing that science, skill, or money could
accomplish has been left undone.
The difficulties were certainly considerable. There has always been
a tendency for the river bed to get choked up by the sediment the
stream failed to carry on; the banks are weak; while the variation in
water level is sometimes as much as 10 feet in a single month. None
the less, the Mississippi played for a time as important a rôle in the
west and the south as the Erie Canal played in the north. Steamboats on
the western rivers increased in number from 20, in 1818, to 1,200, in
1848, and there was a like development in flat boat tonnage. With the
expansion of the river traffic came a growth of large cities and towns
alongside. Louisville increased in population from 4,000, in 1820, to
43,000, in 1850, and St Louis from 4,900 to 77,000 in the same period.
With the arrival of the railroads began the decline of the river,
though some years were to elapse before the decline was seriously felt.
It was the absolute perfection of the railway system that eventually
made its competition irresistible. The lines paralleled the river; they
had, as I have said, easy grades; they responded to that consideration
in regard to speedy delivery of consignments which is as pronounced in
the United States as it is in Great Britain; they were as free from
stoppages due to variations in water level as they were from stoppages
on account of ice or snow; and they could be provided with branch
lines as "feeders," going far inland, so that the trader did not have
either to build his factory on the river bank or to pay cost of cartage
between factory and river. The railway companies, again, were able to
provide much more efficient terminal facilities, especially in the
erection of large wharves, piers, and depôts which allow of the railway
waggons coming right alongside the steamers. At Galveston I saw cargo
being discharged from the ocean-going steamers by being placed on
trucks which were raised from the vessel by endless moving-platforms
to the level of the goods station, where stood, along parallel
series of lines, the railway waggons which would take them direct to
Chicago, San Francisco, or elsewhere. With facilities such as these
no inland waterway can possibly compete. The railways, again, were
able, in competition with the river, to reduce their charges to "what
the traffic would bear," depending on a higher proportion of profit
elsewhere. The steamboats could adopt no such policy as this, and the
traders found that, by the time they had paid, not only the charges for
actual river transport, but insurance and extra cartage, as well, they
had paid as much as transport by rail would have cost, while getting a
much slower and more inconvenient service.
[Illustration: SUCCESSFUL RIVALS OF MISSISSIPPI CARGO BOATS.
(1) Illinois Central Freight Train; 43 cars; 2,100 tons.
(2) " " Banana Express, New Orleans to Chicago; 34 cars;
433 tons of bananas.
[_To face page 114._
]
The final outcome of all these conditions is indicated by some remarks
made by Mr Stuyvesant Fish, President of the Illinois Central Railroad
Company (the chief railway competitors of the Mississippi steamboats),
in the address he delivered as President of the Seventh Session of the
International Railway Congress at Washington, in May 1905:--
"It is within my knowledge that twenty years ago there were annually
carried by steamboats from Memphis to New Orleans over 100,000 bales
of cotton, and that in almost every year since the railroads between
Memphis and New Orleans passed under one management, not a single bale
has been carried down the Mississippi River from Memphis by boat, and
in no one year have 500 bales been thus carried; the reason being
that, including the charges for marine and fire insurance, the rates
by water are higher than by rail."
To this statement Mr Fish added some figures which may be tabulated as
follows:--
TONNAGE OF FREIGHT RECEIVED AT OR DESPATCHED FROM NEW ORLEANS.
+----------------------------------------+-------------+-------------+
| | 1890 | 1900 |
+----------------------------------------+-------------+-------------+
| By the Mississippi River (all sources) | 2,306,290 | 450,498 |
| By rail | 3,557,742 | 6,852,064 |
+----------------------------------------+-------------+-------------+
Decline of river traffic in ten years 1,855,792 tons
Increase of rail " " " 3,294,322 "
These figures bear striking testimony to the results that may be
brought about in a country where railways are allowed a fair chance of
competing with even the greatest of natural waterways--a chance, as I
have said, denied them in Germany and France. Looking, too, at these
figures, I understand better the significance of what I saw at Memphis,
where a solitary Mississippi steamboat--one of the survivals of those
huge floating warehouses now mostly rusting out their existence at New
Orleans--was having her cargo discharged on the river banks by a few
negroes, while the powerful locomotives of the Illinois Central were
rushing along on the adjoining railway with the biggest train-loads it
was possible for them to haul.
On the general position in the United States I might quote the
following from a communication with which I have been favoured by Mr
Luis Jackson, an Englishman by birth, who, after an early training on
British railways, went to the United States, created there the rôle of
"industrial commissioner" in connection with American railways, and
now fills that position on the Erie Railroad:--
"When I was in the West the question of water transportation down the
Mississippi was frequently remarked upon. The Mississippi is navigable
from St Paul to New Orleans. In the early days the towns along the
Mississippi, especially those from St Paul to St Louis, depended upon,
and had their growth through, the river traffic. It was a common
remark among our railroad people that 'we could lick the river.' The
traffic down the Mississippi, especially from St Paul to St Louis
(I can only speak of the territory with which I am well acquainted)
perceptibly declined in competition with the railroads, and the river
towns have been revived by, and now depend more for their growth on,
the railroads than on the river.... Figures do not prove anything.
If the Erie Canal and the Mississippi River traffic had increased,
doubled, trebled, or quadrupled in the past years, instead of actually
dwindling by tonnage figures, it would prove nothing as against the
tremendous tonnage hauled by the trunk line railroads. The Erie
Railroad Company, New York to Chicago, last year carried 32,000,000
tons of revenue freights. It would take a pretty good canal to handle
that amount of traffic; and the Erie is only one of many lines between
New York and Chicago.
"A canal, paralleling great railroads, to some extent injures them
on through traffic. The tendency of all railroads is in the line of
progress. As the tonnage increases the equipment becomes larger, and
the general tendency of railroad rates is downwards; in other words,
the public in the end gets from the railroad all that can be expected
from a canal, and much more. The railroad can expand right and left,
and reach industries by side tracks; with canals every manufacturer
must locate on the banks of the canal. Canals for internal commerce,
in my mind, are out of date; they belong to the 'slow.' Nor do I
believe that the traffic management of canals by the State has the
same conception of traffic measures which is adopted by the modern
managers of railroads.
"Canals affect rates on heavy commodities, and play a part mostly
injurious, to my mind, to the proper development of railroads,
especially on the Continent of Europe. They may do local business, but
the railroad is the real handmaid of commerce."
By way of concluding this brief sketch of American conditions, I cannot
do better than adopt the final sentences in Professor Dixon's paper at
the St Louis Railway Club to which I have already referred:--
"Two considerations should, above all others, be kept in mind in
determination of the feasibility of any project: first, the very
positive limitations to the efficiency of rivers and canals as
transportation agencies because of their lack of flexibility and the
natural disabilities under which they suffer; and secondly, that water
transportation is not necessarily cheap simply because the Government
constructs and maintains the channels. Nothing could be more delusive
than the assertion so frequently made, which is found in the opening
pages of the report of the New York Committee on Canals of 1899, that
water transportation is inherently cheaper than rail transportation.
Such an assertion is true only of ocean transportation, and possibly
also of large bodies of water like the lakes, although this last is
doubtful.
"By all means let us have our waterways developed when such
development is economically justifiable. What is justifiable must be
a matter of judgment, and possibly to some extent of experimentation,
but the burden of proof rests on its advocates. Such projects should
be carried out by the localities interested and the burden should
be borne by those who are to derive the benefit. Only in large
undertakings of national concern should the General Government be
called upon for aid.
"But I protest most vigorously against the deluge of schemes poured in
upon Congress at every session by reckless advocates who, disregarding
altogether the cost of their crazy measures in the increased burden
of general taxation, argue for the inherent cheapness of water
transportation, and urge the construction at public expense of works
whose traffic will never cover the cost of maintenance."