WHERE TRADE CONCENTRATES.
Buffalo’s location is unique. It is the stopping off place between distant sections for men, animals, lumber, grain and general merchandise. The incidental business growing out of this fact is enormous. Grain, coal, iron, oil, lumber and other products of this great country gravitate toward Buffalo, and here they are sent to the mills, refineries and factories, or are transferred from boats to cars, or cars to boats, and sent east or west as the case may be.
The grain receipts by lake at this port have more than tripled in the past ten years, reaching nearly 165,000,000 bushels in 1891. These shipments are bound to vastly increase as new stretches of country in the West and Northwest are opened up and tapped by railroad lines. The recent passage of the river and harbor appropriation bill, by which an expenditure of $4,000,000 is authorized in securing a twenty-foot channel for lake navigation, will result in still lower rates and greatly increased shipments by lake. The saving in lake freights over the average railroad rates in 1891 was about $150,000,000.
Many of the largest coal trestles in the world are located here. This is the greatest coal distributing point in the world. Our coal trade is simply enormous. To give an indication of this, it is sufficient to quote the coal shipments by lake alone from Buffalo in 1891. They amounted to 2,365,895 tons, and the shipments by canal and rail were very large. A conservative estimate places the value of property used in the coal trade here at $10,000,000. This estimate, of course, does not include vessels engaged in the coal trade, nor railroad property outside of that actually devoted to the coal business.
The lumber trade here is phenomenally large. This, of course, is to be expected, owing to our location at the foot of the great lakes. The rich lumbering districts bordering upon the lakes are tributary to us, and the consequence is that Buffalo and Tonawanda, which are practically one, receive and distribute immense quantities of lumber. This is, in fact, the greatest distributing point for lumber in the world.
In addition to all this, we have the largest sheep market in the world, one of the largest horse markets in the world, and, next to Chicago, the largest cattle market in the world.