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more of harbor space has been made available with a depth at low water of thirty feet.

With these improvements the Los Angeles harbor will have twenty miles of water front, which can be doubled by the construction of piers without disturbing the present harbor system.

In addition to the public improvements on the Los Angeles harbor the great private corporations are preparing to increase their facilities for handling the Panama Canal trade. About 250 acres of land will be made by filling at a cost of $3,000,000 by private concerns. The Southern Pacific railroad has completed what is claimed to be the longest slip in the United States. It is 2,100 feet long and 250 feet wide.

As for Los Angeles' grip on the Panama business, the southern Californians figure this way: As for an entrance into a harbor what better could be asked than a space 4,000 feet wide with a depth of from thirty-eight to forty-eight feet and no rocks or sandbars? But the most important of all is the fact that Los Angeles is seventy miles from the great circle route between Panama and the Orient. By going a little more than one hundred miles out of their course, the vessels traveling between Atlantic ports. and the Far East can deliver and receive freight in the richest section of the south.

The Los Angeles people say there are two benefits their city should derive from these facts. First, the direct all-water connection between the Pacific and Atlantic seaboards, in which all ports on the Pacific Coast should participate, but Los Angeles most of all. Second, Los Angeles should be the port of call of all vessels coming through the canal and crossing the Pacific.

Then as to the swat that these westerners expect to take at the railroads. Los Angeles is taken as an example of how it is figured on the Pacific Coast that the overland transportation lines will be hit. It is expected that goods may be sent from New York to the Pacific Coast for $6 a ton by way of the canal. The present rail rate on oranges for instance from Los Angeles to New York is $23 a ton. Therefore products may be shipped by water at about one-fourth the present

tariff. Freight also may be sent to Europe at correspondingly lower rates.

According to the figures of the seaport cities, the inland region should be able to take advantage of the all-water route. Salt Lake, for instance, should be able to transport freight, via Los Angeles and the canal to New York at a saving of $14 a ton on the present schedule. Parts of Arizona could save $19 a ton.

But as said before Los Angeles is not the only Pacific Coast seaport that expects to benefit by the Panama Canal.

After a fight against the Southern Pacific railroad for the control of its water front, which has been waged for more than thirty years, Oakland has won and now is preparing to spend millions of dollars in the establishment of municipal docks and terminals to equip properly this port for handling ocean commerce now existing and the great trade expected to develop with the opening of the canal.

The people of Oakland recently voted $2,500,000 in bonds to begin the work, but the plans of the harbor commission call for an ultimate expenditure of $25,000,000. For years it has been the chief ambition of the Oakland people to own their own wharves and control their shipping facilities. This has been the political issue on which elections have been won and lost. And it was the power of the Southern Pacific against which the people had to battle.

All this muss was caused by the little hamlet of Oakland giving Horace W. Carpentier a fifty-year grant to the water front in exchange for a frame schoolhouse twenty by thirty feet. Carpentier sold this grant to the Central Pacific Railroad and its allied corporations and from that day until the grant expired, recently, the water front of Oakland has been in the control of the Southern Pacific.

But now Oakland is free. It has thrown off the yoke of the corporation and is prepared to hit back with a vengeance. When the Southern Pacific was compelled to accept a franchise, last October, permitting the corporation to use a portion of the water front for wharves, docks and other terminal facilities, the long battle had at last been

ended with the city of Oakland the victor.

In the inner harbor of Oakland, for the dredging of which the Federal government recently appropriated an additional million and a half dollars, the first big municipal work is to be done. A concrete quay 2,900 feet long will be built along the north shore and the space between this and beach will be filled. On this fil warehouses will be constructed and a belt line railroad will be operated on the edge of the quay.

Along this quay the city will expend almost the entire $2,500,000. The only other work to be undertaken with this appropriation will be on what is known. as the Key Route basin and the southwest front, between the Southern Pacific and Western Pacific railroad moles. A bulkhead will be constructed on the Key Route basin and the land behind this filled, giving 300 acres of land available for warehouses, streets and terminal facilities. The land will be made by the silt taken up by the dredger in front of the bulkhead in order to make the deep water channel in which wharves can be constructed.

When the present plans of the city have been finished, there will be in use along the Oakland water front proper, eight and one-half miles of wharves. And even then Oakland has not exhausted its resources and many more miles of water front can be made available for handling commerce. In all, the Oaklanders declare they will have twenty-six miles of water frontage when the plans are carried out.

Oaklanders, like all good Pacific good Pacific Coasters, are exceedingly sensitive on all matters pertaining to their harbor. The statement by the commissioner of corporations in his report to the secretary of commerce and labor, "that the three transcontinental railroads will have virtual control of all practical water front except that owned by individuals," stirred up a hornets' nest in the California city. The statement was challenged immediately and figures submitted to show the commissioner did not know what he was talking about. And this is the way the Oaklanders figured out their control of the water front; railroads and privately owned frontage,

9,750 feet; municipally owned, 21,730 feet; disputed, but likely to go to the city, 8,000 feet.

But even with the Oakland city government building municipal wharves and shipping facilities, the railroads also are preparing for the Panama Canal trade. The Western Pacific is under contract to expend five millions of dollars; the Key Route railroad and the big wharf and dock concern of which F. M. Smith, the "borax king" is the head, will spend five millions more, each; and the Southern Pacific will spend $4,000,000 to $5,000,000 on improvements to its already big docking facilities.

With the amounts shipyard concerns and others are spending it is estimated fifty millions of dollars will be expended in Oakland harbor in the next five years. The municipal wharves will be equipped with the latest improvements for handling freight, including electric cranes. And this feature is one of the strong arguments to be advanced by Oaklanders in favor of their harbor. They declare that even though rival ports charge less for docking facilities, the Oakland wharves will be the cheapest in the end for vessels because of the speed and cheapness with which cargoes may be handled.

Across the bay from Oakland, the big city of San Francisco is preparing to retain its hold on the Oriental commerce and also is getting ready to bid for its share of the Panama Canal trade. Already a bond appropriation of two million dollars has been expended. No sooner did the people of the bay city find that this money had gone into docking facilities than another appropriation of nine millions of dollars was voted. This is the fund with which the work will be continued.

The improvements in San Francisco's harbor consist in building a concrete seawall parallel with the shore line and filling in the space between, making a large area of seawall lots. From the seawall, piers have been built and others are being constructed, at right angles to the wall. These piers are the most modern known to engineers. They are constructed of concrete and steel. Not even wooden piling is used, but steel cylinders are sunk and the cement placed in them.

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LOS ANGELES CLAIMS TO BE ONE OF THE GREATEST LUMBER RECEIVING PORTS IN THE

WORLD.

View looking scaward toward the outer harbor.

A belt line railroad is operated in connection with these other facilities. All these are under the supervision of the state board of harbor commissioners.

The warehouses, piers, belt line railroad, etc., are the property of the state and are operated by the state board so as to return a profit on the investment.

The water front line under jurisdiction of the state board at present is eight miles long and five miles of berth space is available. When the plans now contemplated are carried out with piers 250 feet wide and 800 feet long, the contour will be more than thirty-six miles in length.

At Portland, the metropolis of Oregon, elaborate preparations are under

way for the increase of trade expected when the Panama Canal is opened. Portlanders consider their city to be a seaport and practically speaking it is, but theoretically it is a river port. But notwithstanding the fact that it is located far up the Columbia and Willamette rivers, it bids for a big share of the western slope trade. Portland's chief claim on commerce is through its immense grain and lumber trade. At Portland's doors the railroads dump their loads of grain from the interior and Portland has ships waiting to receive the

cargoes.

Portlanders expect when the canal opens that they will get a large slice of the trade from the eastern coast for dis

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LOS ANGELES' BREAKWATER, WHICH COST $3.000.000 TO BUILD.

It is over 9,000 feet long. with open trestle 1,800 feet long.

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GRAIN VESSELS WAITING, OFF PORTLAND, FOR CARGOES OF WHEAT.

tribution. That's the reason they voted to expend two and one-half millions of dollars in harbor improvements immediately. They also have passed an ordinance that places all wharves and docking facilities within the city limits under supervision of the city government. Private corporations also plan to expend something more than two millions in reclaiming land along the river front at Portland.

Farther north on the shores of Puget Sound, the young commercial giant of the Northwest, Seattle, is struggling to free itself from the galling yoke of the corporations. To strike the railroads a mighty blow and also to reach out for its share of the Panama Canal trade is the ambition of Seattle. And when this ambition is realized Seattle will have the most unique harbor in the world.

Seattleites have found that the narrow strip of level land along their water front, facing the Sound, has been gobbled up by the railroads and other corporations. So what do these Seattleites do but decide to make a great fresh water harbor in the very heart of the city and leave the salt water to the private concerns, at least for a while.

The Lake Washington Canal project

is the weapon with which Seattle will hit the railroads and bid for the commerce of the world. The Federal government has been coaxed into appropriating a couple of million dollars to construct the locks necessary and the local government has enough money available to do its share of the digging. The plan is to dig a waterway from Salmon Bay-which is a long arm reaching landward from Puget Sound-to Lake Union and then to connect Lake Union with Lake Washington. These two lakes are separated by a narrow strip of land, or were until recently when the last mud barrier was blasted away and the two bodies of water united.

At a recent election Seattle voted a bond issue of $1,750,000 for the improvements to its harbor, including the Lake Washington Canal project. When the canal is completed, which will be in less than three years, Seattle's present water frontage of ten miles will be increased to more than one hundred miles of available space fronting on deep, navigable water.

Another project that will be undertaken with the bonds is that of filling in more tide flats and dredging the Duwamish waterway, which empties into the

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southern end of the salt water harbor. This will add another twenty-four miles to Seattle's water frontage.

But this isn't all that Seattle proposes to do to the corporations. It is proposed to bring the entire harbor under the control of a harbor commission, consisting of perhaps three members. This board will be a government within itself and will have absolute charge of the water frontage, docks, warehouses and everything that is connected with the commerce of the port. Ultimately it is proposed to establish a belt line railroad under control of this harbor board. At this time Seattle has no municipal or state piers or docking facilities.

No true Seattleite admits that his harbor will not be the largest and best in the world when completed. If you ask a Seattle man how he figures his port will capture the lion's share of the Oriental commerce, he immediately will lead you to a globe. He cannot figure out his arguments on a flat map of the world's surface. After carefully leading you up to the globe he will prove to you that as the earth is smaller around as you go north, the path across the northern Pacific Ocean from Puget Sound to the Japanese ports is at least 1,000 miles shorter than it is from California. He also will tell you that boats sailing to the Orient from the southern part of the coast go almost directly north until about opposite Puget Sound and then take a westerly course out past the end of the Aleutian Islands. A thousand miles is

some trip for a big vessel, he will fell you and therefore, the future trade of the Orient will be handled through the port of Seattle.

As to the Panama Canal trade he will point out arguments similar to those of other cities, with the additional point in Seattle's favor of a fresh water harbor and closeness to the markets of the Pacific northwest.

To the landlubber the real value of a fresh water harbor is not apparent. One advantage is that salt water animal life cannot live in fresh water. An example of what this means to shipping is shown by the fact that six hundred tons of barnacles were scraped from the bottom of the armored cruiser South Dakota before it made a recent voyage to the Orient. It is necessary to dock and scrape ocean going vessels at frequent periods in order that the sea growth and foulness may be removed. By entering fresh water this growth is removed without the aid of man. With a fresh water harbor thousands of dollars would be saved annually by the shipping interests of the Pacific.

Tacoma, on Puget Sound, has voted a bond issue of half a million for a municipal pier and harbor improvements and is preparing to take the first step in throwing off the yoke of the railroads. This port with its closeness to the grain growing regions is one of the big wheat handling ports of the coast and expects to participate in the benefits of the Panama Canal. Tacoma harbor has

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SEATTLE'S SALT WATERFRONT. NOW IN THE HANDS OF PRIVATE CORPORATIONS.

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