To this statement Mr Fish added some figures which may be tabulated as follows:—
TONNAGE OF FREIGHT RECEIVED AT OR DESPATCHED FROM NEW ORLEANS.
| 1890 | 1900 | |
| By the Mississippi River (all sources) | 2,306,290 | 450,498 |
| By rail | 3,557,742 | 6,852,064 |
Decline of river traffic in ten years 1,855,792 tons
Increase of rail " " " 3,294,322 "
These figures bear striking testimony to the results that may be brought about in a country where railways are allowed a fair chance of competing with even the greatest of natural waterways—a chance, as I have said, denied them in Germany and France. Looking, too, at these figures, I understand better the significance of what I saw at Memphis, where a solitary Mississippi steamboat—one of the survivals of those huge floating warehouses now mostly rusting out their existence at New Orleans—was having her cargo discharged on the river banks by a few negroes, while the powerful locomotives of the Illinois Central were rushing along on the adjoining railway with the biggest train-loads it was possible for them to haul.
On the general position in the United States I might quote the following from a communication with which I have been favoured by Mr Luis Jackson, an Englishman by birth, who, after an early training on British railways, went to the United States, created there the rôle of "industrial commissioner" in connection with American railways, and now fills that position on the Erie Railroad:—
"When I was in the West the question of water transportation down the Mississippi was frequently remarked upon. The Mississippi is navigable from St Paul to New Orleans. In the early days the towns along the Mississippi, especially those from St Paul to St Louis, depended upon, and had their growth through, the river traffic. It was a common remark among our railroad people that 'we could lick the river.' The traffic down the Mississippi, especially from St Paul to St Louis (I can only speak of the territory with which I am well acquainted) perceptibly declined in competition with the railroads, and the river towns have been revived by, and now depend more for their growth on, the railroads than on the river.... Figures do not prove anything. If the Erie Canal and the Mississippi River traffic had increased, doubled, trebled, or quadrupled in the past years, instead of actually dwindling by tonnage figures, it would prove nothing as against the tremendous tonnage hauled by the trunk line railroads. The Erie Railroad Company, New York to Chicago, last year carried 32,000,000 tons of revenue freights. It would take a pretty good canal to handle that amount of traffic; and the Erie is only one of many lines between New York and Chicago.
"A canal, paralleling great railroads, to some extent injures them on through traffic. The tendency of all railroads is in the line of progress. As the tonnage increases the equipment becomes larger, and the general tendency of railroad rates is downwards; in other words, the public in the end gets from the railroad all that can be expected from a canal, and much more. The railroad can expand right and left, and reach industries by side tracks; with canals every manufacturer must locate on the banks of the canal. Canals for internal commerce, in my mind, are out of date; they belong to the 'slow.' Nor do I believe that the traffic management of canals by the State has the same conception of traffic measures which is adopted by the modern managers of railroads.
"Canals affect rates on heavy commodities, and play a part mostly injurious, to my mind, to the proper development of railroads, especially on the Continent of Europe. They may do local business, but the railroad is the real handmaid of commerce."
By way of concluding this brief sketch of American conditions, I cannot do better than adopt the final sentences in Professor Dixon's paper at the St Louis Railway Club to which I have already referred:—