But the natural advantages of situation possessed by these great
cities have been grandly supplemented by the enterprise of their
inhabitants. GLASGOW is only a river port. For twenty miles below its
site the Clyde is naturally narrow, shallow, and shoal-encumbered. In
places it is naturally not more than fifteen inches deep. By the
expenditure of no less a sum than $60,000,000 this shallow stream has
been converted into a continuous harbour, lined on either side for
miles with wharves and docks, and easily capable of accommodating the
largest and finest merchant ships afloat. As a consequence of this
enterprise Glasgow has become the greatest ship-building port in the
world. No less than twenty shipyards--in efficiency and magnitude of
the very highest class--are to be found along the banks of the once
shallow, impassable Clyde, between Glasgow proper and the river's
mouth.
Similarly, the enterprise of the ship merchants of LIVERPOOL has
converted a port, that high tides and impassable bars would naturally
render unfit for modern ships, into the greatest shipping port in the
world. One hundred million dollars were spent in making the
improvement, but $5,000,000 is the annual revenue derived therefrom
in dock dues alone. And because of this enterprise Liverpool can now
boast of controlling one fourth of all the imports of the kingdom, and
two fifths of all the exports, and of handling three fourths of all
the grain and provision trade of the kingdom, and of having the
largest grain warehouses in the world.
[Illustration: The Manchester ship canal.]
But MANCHESTER, a wholly inland city, forty miles distant from
Liverpool, its nearest port, has outdone even Glasgow and Liverpool in
its endeavour to bring the sea to its own doors. It also has spent
$100,000,000--not, however, in amounts spread over a number of years,
and as occasion seemed to demand, but all at once, in one lump sum, in
one huge enterprise. It has built a canal to the Mersey where it is
navigable, thirty-five and one half miles in length, and sufficiently
deep and wide, so that the whole of its vast importation of cotton,
and the whole of its vast manufacture of cotton and other textile
fabrics, and as much else as may be desired, may be brought in from
the sea or taken to the sea in merchant vessels of the very largest
size now afloat. And it has done this in the face of engineering
difficulties, and of obstacles raised against it by jealous competing
interests that were almost insurmountable.