With this wage-list and expense-account before them, the captain and his chief clerk, who may also be a part owner in the boat, are face to face with the problem of meeting such expenses from passenger and cargo lists, and at the same time providing a sinking fund with which to build another craft within four years. To the uninitiated this would seem a somewhat appalling problem; with these old hands, the question would no doubt resolve itself down to the number of round trips that they would have to make to pay for their boat. The question of years never enters their heads.
In 1857 there were three principal points of departure on the upper river, above St. Louis. At that time St. Louis itself was the great wholesale centre, but it was not so important as an initial point for passengers for the upper Mississippi. The flood of immigration from St. Louis was for many reasons up the Missouri: furs and gold could be found in the mountains; there was a possible slave state in the farming regions below the mountains. The people who settled Minnesota and northern Wisconsin came from the East, and reached the river at three points—Rock Island, Dunleith (or Galena), and Prairie du Chien. Taking the point with which I am most familiar, we will start the new boat from Galena.
At that time Galena was, next to St. Louis, the principal wholesale entrepôt in the West. It was a poor trip for the boat which I have taken as a model, when she did not get a hundred tons of freight at Galena from the wholesale houses there. The balance was found at Dunleith, the terminus of what is now the Illinois Central Railway (then the Galena & Western Union); at Dubuque, which was also a big wholesale town; and at Prairie du Chien, the terminus of the Milwaukee & Mississippi Railway.
The freight rates on the river ran from 25 cents per hundred for short distances, to $1.50 per hundred from Galena to Stillwater, or St. Paul. No package was taken at less than 25 cents, however small it was, or how short the distance. In order not to overstate, we will take fifty cents per hundred as the average, and three hundred tons of cargo as the capacity of the two hundred-ton boat.[6] This is relatively the capacity of a vessel of that tonnage after deducting for passengers and fuel, and the [165] [166] space occupied by deck passengers. This latter item did not seriously count, for the freight was usually taken first and the deck passengers were then piled on top of it. Their comfort or convenience was never taken into consideration.
The boat can carry two hundred cabin passengers, and a hundred on deck. We will assume that there is another boat competing for this trip, and we do not fill up to the capacity. The clerk studies the rate sheets in vogue in 1857, and finds the following:
UP-STREAM RATES
| 30 miles or under (no charge less than 25c) | 6c per mile | ||
| 30 to 60 miles | 5c per mile | ||
| Over 60 miles | 4c per mile | ||
| Galena or Dunleith to— | Miles | Cabin passage | Deck passage |
| Cassville | 30 | $ 2.00 | $1.25 |
| Prairie du Chien | 66 | 3.50 | 2.00 |
| La Crosse | 150 | 6.00 | 3.25 |
| Red Wing | 256 | 10.00 | 3.50 |
| Stillwater and St. Paul | 321 | 12.00 | 6.00 |
| Galena or Dunleith to St. Paul | 321 | $12.00 | $6.00 |
| Prairie du Chien to St. Paul | 255 | 10.00 | 5.00 |
| La Crosse to St. Paul | 175 | 7.00 | 4.00 |
In 1904, the cabin passage on the Diamond Jo Line boats from Dunleith to St. Paul, was $8.00; from Prairie du Chien, $6.75; from La Crosse, $4.75. This is in competition with six railroads practically paralleling the river. In 1857 there was no railroad competition, and practically none from steamboats. Every boat attained a full passenger list, and was at liberty to charge whatever the conscience of the captain dictated—assuming a conscience. I have known a boat to fill up at Dunleith at the rate of $16.00 to St. Paul, and contract that all the men should sleep on the cabin floor, leaving staterooms for the women. And the passengers were glad enough to accept such conditions, for a detention of two days at Dunleith would cost a far greater sum than the overcharge exacted by the steamboat officers.
In the foregoing table I have included La Crosse, which, however, was not an active factor in river rates until 1859. Before then, hundreds of passengers were landed there from Rock Island, Dunleith, and Prairie du Chien; but as the railroad had not yet reached the river at that point, there were but few passengers from La Crosse for landings farther up the river. When our boat leaves Prairie du Chien, then, the following business is in sight:
| 150 passengers from Dunleith or Galena, at an average of $8.00 | $1,200.00 |
| 50 deck passengers at an average of $5.00 | 250.00 |
| 300 tons freight, 6,000 cwts. at an average of 50c | 3,000.00 |
| ———— | |
| $4,450.00 |