JOHNSON, E. R. "Inland Waterways, Their Relation to Transportation." American Academy of Political and Social Science. September, 1893. Philadelphia.

JOHNSON, E. R. "River and Harbor Bills." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. ii, pp. 782-812. 1892. Philadelphia.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE ORGANIZATION OF THE SERVICE AND THE EQUIPMENT EMPLOYED ON INLAND WATERWAYS

THE efficiency of the transportation service, whether by rail or upon the ocean or upon inland waterways, depends on the equipment used and on the business organization by which the service is performed. Canal transportation in the United States is relatively unimportant; the equipment employed is crude, and the service is without organization. The traffic on our northern lakes, on the contrary, is of great volume, the vessels and the terminal facilities are of the highest technical efficiency, and the service is conducted chiefly by large corporations so organized as to secure the most economic business results. The equipment and management of the river transportation service are superior to those prevailing in the canal service, but do not compare with the equipment and business methods that characterize transportation on the Great Lakes.

The canal barge in general use, even on the Erie Canal, is the old type of wooden barge that has been in use for nearly a century. The maximum capacity of the Erie Canal barge is now what it has been for forty years (240 tons), and the canals of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, and Illinois are of smaller dimensions than the Erie Canal. Steam towage is employed to a slight extent on the Erie Canal, but nearly all of the tonnage moved on that and the other American canals is handled by animal traction.

The mule and the towpath have not yet given place to mechanical power.

The enlargement of the Erie Canal, now in progress, will permit the use of 1,000-ton barges, and will necessitate the use of mechanical traction. Probably a canal boat equipped with steam power, and loaded with its own quota of cargo, will tow two barges. By this method one engine. will be able to move between 2,500 and 3,000 tons of cargo, or 85,000 to 100,000 bushels of wheat, from the Great Lakes to the seaboard. Barges of from 1,000 to 1,500 tons burden are used on the large rivers of Europe, and barges of half that size are commonly employed on many European canals.

The canal transportation service, as now performed, requires only a simple business organization. An individual or a small partnership may own and operate one barge, or several barges, without investing much capital or taking much business risk. The traffic on the Erie Canal, and others not under railroad control, is handled by numerous small carriers; while in the case of many of the canals that have been purchased by competing railroads, the waterways, when not closed to traffic and abandoned, are operated by a centralized organization such as a railroad company would naturally establish.

The present unorganized management of traffic will hardly suffice for conducting the large transportation service which the improved Erie Canal will be capable of performing. Upon it, and such other similar canals as may be opened in the future, some more highly organized and more economical management of traffic than now prevails upon our canals will be required.

Since the introduction of the steamboat on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, during the second decade of the last century, the traffic of those and the other rivers of the United States has been conducted by the use of the

typical flat-bottom, stern-wheel steamboat, the design of which has not greatly changed for half a century. A large size Ohio or Mississippi river steamboat is from 200 to 250 feet in length, about 40 feet wide, and with a hold 8 or 10 feet in depth. The boats when loaded will ordinarily draw from 4 to 6 feet of water, the depth of draft depending upon the load, which in turn is determined by the available depth of the river channel. These flatbottom river steamers will carry several hundred tons of cargo on a surprisingly small draft of water.

In times past, before the universal use of the railroad for travel, there was a large passenger traffic upon the rivers of the United States, particularly those of the Ohio and Mississippi section of the country; and even now, although most passengers travel by rail, river steamers are used by a relatively large number of travelers. It is stated, for instance, that over 2,500,000 passengers were carried to and from St. Louis by river during the World's Fair year of 1904. While the river traffic that year, as in the case of the rail traffic in and out of St. Louis, was unusually large, the steamboat lines nevertheless have a regular passenger traffic of fair proportions.

The freight traffic, on such rivers as the Mississippi, Ohio, and Hudson, is handled in part by regular lines of steamboats, and in part by independent packets and towboats. There are also numerous pleasure boats operated more or less regularly during certain seasons of navigation. The regular steamboat lines carry both freight and passengers. As illustrations of these river steamboat companies the following may be mentioned: The Cincinnati and Pittsburg Packet Line, which conducts a service three times a week between Pittsburg and Cincinnati; the Cincinnati, Pomeroy, and Charleston Packet Company, which has a weekly service between Cincinnati and Charleston; also a half-weekly service between Cincinnati and Pome

roy, and a daily service to Maysville and to Chilo; the Diamond-Jo Line, which for many years has operated four steamers on the Mississippi, above St. Louis; the Lee Line, which has a regular line of four steamboats on the Mississippi, below St. Louis; and the Eagle Packet Company, whose fleet of six steamboats is operated on the Mississippi, both above and below St. Louis. Numerous other lines might be mentioned, but these are typical of the river steamboat packet service.

A large share of the traffic handled on the rivers of the United States, particularly on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, consists of rafts and of barge traffic. For fifty years great quantities of lumber have annually been taken from the pine forests of northern Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and much of that lumber has been delivered to lower Mississippi Valley points after having been rafted to and down the Mississippi River. The pine forests of the upper Mississippi Valley have been largely timbered over, and the amount of lumber rafted down the Mississippi and its affluents is far less now than formerly. The barge traffic down the rivers of the Mississippi Valley consists in part of grain and building materials, but most largely of coal, the chief part of which is taken from the mines adjacent to the Monongahela and Great Kanawha rivers. The manner in which this heavy coal traffic is shipped down the Ohio will be described in the following chapter.

The coal traffic down the Ohio is handled mainly by a few large miners and dealers in coal. One corporation, for instance, the Monongahela Consolidated Coal and Coke Company, owns upward of 100 towboats and 3,000 barges. These towboats and barges transport about 4,000,000 tons of coal annually. The traffic is economically handled, and when the project is completed of giving the Ohio River slack water with a channel of 6 to 9 feet in depth at low