British Canals: Is their resuscitation practicable?

by Edwin A. Pratt

A CARGO BOAT ON THE MISSISSIPPI.

[To face page 110.

This magnificent stream has, in itself, a length of 2,485 miles. But the Missouri is really only an upper prolongation of the same river under another name, and the total length of the two, from mouth to source, is 4,190 miles, of which the greater distance is navigable. The Mississippi and its various tributaries drain, altogether, an area of 1,240,000 square miles, or nearly one-third of the territory of the United States. If any great river in the world had a chance at all of holding its own against the railroads as a highway of traffic it should, surely, be the Mississippi, to which British theorists ought to be able to point as a powerful argument in support of their general proposition concerning the advantages of water over rail-transport. But the actual facts all point in the other direction.

The earliest conditions of navigation on the Mississippi are well shown in the following extract from an article published in the Quarterly Review of March 1830, under the heading, "Railroads and Locomotive Steam-carriages":—

"As an example of the difficulties of internal navigation, it may be mentioned that on the great river Mississippi, which flows at the rate of 5 or 6 miles an hour, it was the practice of a certain class of boatmen, who brought down the produce of the interior to New Orleans, to break up their boats, sell the timber, and afterwards return home slowly by land; and a voyage up the river from New Orleans to Pittsburg, a distance of about 2,000 miles, could hardly be accomplished, with the most laborious efforts, within a period of four months. But the uncertain and limited influence, both of the wind and the tide, is now superseded by a new agent, which in power far surpassing the raging torrent, is yet perfectly manageable, and acts with equal efficacy in any direction.... Steamboats of every description, and on the most approved models, ply on all the great rivers of the United States; the voyage from New Orleans to Pittsburg, which formerly occupied four months, is accomplished with ease in fifteen or twenty days, and at the rate of not less than 5 miles an hour."

Since this article in the Quarterly Review was published, enormous sums of money have been spent on the Mississippi—partly with a view to the prevention of floods, but partly, also, to improve the river for the purposes of navigation. Placed in charge of a Mississippi Commission and of the Chief of Engineers in the United States Army, the river has been systematically surveyed; special studies and reports have been drawn up on every possible aspect of its normal or abnormal conditions and circumstances; the largest river dredges in the world have been employed to ensure an adequate depth of the river bed; engineering works in general on the most complete scale have been carried out—in fact, nothing that science, skill, or money could accomplish has been left undone.

The difficulties were certainly considerable. There has always been a tendency for the river bed to get choked up by the sediment the stream failed to carry on; the banks are weak; while the variation in water level is sometimes as much as 10 feet in a single month. None the less, the Mississippi played for a time as important a rôle in the west and the south as the Erie Canal played in the north. Steamboats on the western rivers increased in number from 20, in 1818, to 1,200, in 1848, and there was a like development in flat boat tonnage. With the expansion of the river traffic came a growth of large cities and towns alongside. Louisville increased in population from 4,000, in 1820, to 43,000, in 1850, and St Louis from 4,900 to 77,000 in the same period.

With the arrival of the railroads began the decline of the river, though some years were to elapse before the decline was seriously felt. It was the absolute perfection of the railway system that eventually made its competition irresistible. The lines paralleled the river; they had, as I have said, easy grades; they responded to that consideration in regard to speedy delivery of consignments which is as pronounced in the United States as it is in Great Britain; they were as free from stoppages due to variations in water level as they were from stoppages on account of ice or snow; and they could be provided with branch lines as "feeders," going far inland, so that the trader did not have either to build his factory on the river bank or to pay cost of cartage between factory and river. The railway companies, again, were able to provide much more efficient terminal facilities, especially in the erection of large wharves, piers, and depôts which allow of the railway waggons coming right alongside the steamers. At Galveston I saw cargo being discharged from the ocean-going steamers by being placed on trucks which were raised from the vessel by endless moving-platforms to the level of the goods station, where stood, along parallel series of lines, the railway waggons which would take them direct to Chicago, San Francisco, or elsewhere. With facilities such as these no inland waterway can possibly compete. The railways, again, were able, in competition with the river, to reduce their charges to "what the traffic would bear," depending on a higher proportion of profit elsewhere. The steamboats could adopt no such policy as this, and the traders found that, by the time they had paid, not only the charges for actual river transport, but insurance and extra cartage, as well, they had paid as much as transport by rail would have cost, while getting a much slower and more inconvenient service.