A history of commerce

by Clive Day

362. Modern ship canals.—This survey of the development of the means of navigation may fitly be closed by a brief consideration of the modern ship canals and their contribution to the growth of trade. There were, in 1900, a round dozen of these canals, capable of receiving sea-going ships. Some, serving special ports (Amsterdam, Manchester, etc.) were of purely local importance. Others have disappointed the expectations of their promoters. The canal across the isthmus of Corinth has been a distinct failure, and the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal, between the North and Baltic seas, has not yet acquired the share of commerce which its projectors promised for it. Leaving aside the St. Mary’s canal in America there was up to 1914 but one ship canal which had proved its commanding importance, namely the Suez Canal.

A map of the world shows two narrow strips of land left by nature almost as though with the design of stimulating men to pierce them, the isthmus of Suez and the isthmus of Panama. A canal at either point unites not countries or small seas, but continents and great oceans, and saves thousands of miles in the routes of trade. The American isthmus presents great difficulties to the construction of a canal, but the Suez route runs through a district composed almost entirely of sand, with no elevation above 50 or 60 feet and with considerable parts actually below the level of the sea.

363. The Suez Canal, and its services to commerce.—The scheme of reopening the route across the isthmus of Suez, which, as said in the first chapter, had been made practicable for small vessels before the time of Christ, and had been rendered useless in the Middle Ages, was certain to rise as commerce between Europe and the East increased in volume. It is said to have been entertained by Napoleon I among others, but the credit for its accomplishment belongs to a French engineer and promoter, Ferdinand Lesseps. After more than ten years spent in preparation, work was finally begun in 1860, and the canal was ready for use in 1869.

The success of the Suez Canal may be gaged, from the investor’s standpoint, by the fact that dividends have risen to 20 per cent, from the public standpoint by the fact that the tonnage accommodated by the canal in 1891 exceeded ten million, in 1907 exceeded twenty million, and in general has been roughly equal to the tonnage entering and leaving any one of the great seaports of the world. The duration of the voyage to India has been shortened by a third, and more than half of the voyages to the East are now made through the canal rather than around the Cape of Good Hope. The canal has been an important influence in furthering the growth of the world’s steam tonnage, for it is practically barred to sailing vessels by the difficulties of navigation in the Red Sea; no sea-going sailing vessel has passed through it for years. It has made possible the movement of bulky wares formerly excluded from the trade with the East by the expense of transportation: rice, wheat, petroleum, and coal. It has not, however, produced one result which was expected, the diversion of trade to the countries of southern Europe, as in the time before the passage around the Cape had been discovered. Three quarters, in tonnage, of the ships using the canal have been British, and ships from the countries of northern Europe make up most of the remainder.

364. The Panama Canal.—Lesseps could not match in America the success which he had attained at Suez. A French company promoted by him started work at Panama in 1881, but became bankrupt before it had made much progress. Mismanagement at home, disease on the isthmus, above all the tremendous difficulties which nature has placed in the way of a canal at sea level, contributed to this result. The United States took up as a national enterprise a work which now offered but little attraction to private capital, bought out the French company, and in 1904 made arrangements to begin operations. Taught by the experience of the past the government decided on a canal with locks, reaching an altitude of 85 feet above sea level, and took the precautions suggested by sanitary science to protect the laborers against the menaces of plague, yellow fever and malaria. Under army engineers the work was carried on to a successful conclusion, and the canal was opened to traffic in August, 1914. The cost of construction was about $350,000,000.

In the first year of its operation the Panama Canal accommodated about five million tons of shipping; in the year ending in 1920 the figure had risen to about ten. The dislocation of traffic caused by the European War, and interruptions occasioned by earthslides in the Gaillard cut, made the growth of traffic slow and somewhat irregular. Figures for the traffic of the Suez Canal given in the preceding section show that the canal across the American isthmus could not rival in its early years the position of its older competitor for the world’s trade. Even more impressive is a comparison with the figures of traffic through the Sault Ste. Marie canals, on the northern border of the United States. The cargo tonnage by the lake route in 1920 was over eight-fold that carried through the isthmus. The Panama Canal, to 1920, had just about paid the expense of operation and maintenance. There seems no question, however, that apart from important military considerations, the construction of the canal will be justified by the contribution that it will make to the commercial development of the Pacific.

365. The postal service about 1800.—Increased facility in sending communications to a distance has attended the improvement of the means of transportation by land and sea. During the early part of the century the postal service was still cramped by old methods and high charges. In England, for instance, in the period after 1827 and before the reform, postage of fourpence (eight cents) was charged for the carriage of a letter any distance not exceeding 15 miles, and the postage increased with the distance: 8 pence for 80 miles, 12 pence for 300, 15 pence for 600, etc. The government charged, in some cases, nearly five hundred times the actual cost. Under these conditions little use, naturally, was made of the post, and it carried, on an annual average, only three letters for each member of the population. Many letters were sent illicitly by private means of conveyance, and the postal revenue remained nearly stationary for many years before 1839, in spite of the growth of the country in population and business activity. Conditions were better in some states of the Continent, notably Germany, but would still be regarded everywhere as backward.

366. Postal reforms and their results.—A new era in the English postal system dates from the introduction by Rowland Hill of the penny post; after 1840 a letter weighing not over half an ounce could be sent to any place in the United Kingdom if prepaid by a stamp costing one penny. Similar reductions were adopted in other countries; and new facilities were extended for the mailing of cards, printed matter, and periodicals, samples of merchandise, etc. An international Postal Union was established in 1874 among the chief countries of the world, which agreed on common rates of foreign postage, and arranged to cooperate in carrying on the postal service. This Union has improved greatly the means of distant postal communication, and has grown to include practically the whole civilized world, with the exception of China.

It is easy to follow the effects of the various reforms and improvements in the increased use of the mails. In the United Kingdom, for instance, the number of letters sent per head of the population has increased as follows: 1839, 3; 1840, 7; 1872, 28; 1882, 35. The post has developed from a luxury into a social and industrial necessity, and the extent to which it is used in any country furnishes a fair index by which to judge of the country’s advancement. The following countries may be taken as examples, the figures showing the number of pieces of mail sent annually about 1900, per head of the population: United States, 100; United Kingdom, 85; Germany, 81; France, 55; Italy, 17; Japan, 13; Spain, 12; Russian Empire, 5.

367. The telegraph before the application of electricity.—In passing to another subject, electricity, we may still consider ourselves as continuing the discussion of the applications of steam, so dependent are we still on coal and steam for the means of producing and using this new force. Among the manifold applications of electricity in modern life we must here confine ourselves to its use as a means of communication.