A stern-wheel, light-draught boat such as we have taken for this illustration, was quite certain to get five months' service—between the middle of April and the middle of October. In order not to put too great tension upon the credulity of modern readers, we will assume that she gets only five months of navigation. At the close of the season the captain and his clerk figure up the receipts and expenses, and strike a balance like this:
| Receipts, 5 months, at $22,760.00 | $113,800.00 |
| Expenses, 5 months, at $11,500.00 | 57,500.00 |
| ———— | |
| Net earnings for the season | $ 56,300.00 |
This is enough to buy a new boat, and have something over for pin money. No one knows better than the writer the elusiveness, not to say the mendacity, of figures. He has often figured out greater profits than this in the nebulous schemes which have from time to time seduced him from the straight and narrow path of six per cent investment—and had them come out the other way. In steamboating in the fifties, this occurred very often. The most careful captain, employing the highest-priced pilots and engineers, would often lose his boat the first season; a snag or a lighted match, or a little too much steam, dissipating the best-laid plans in a few minutes of time. But the figures given above are conservative—made so purposely. The truth lies at the opposite extreme.
If the books of some of the boats of the old Minnesota Packet Company could be resurrected, they would show earnings and profits far greater than I have ventured to claim in my illustration. The "Fanny Harris", for instance, was a boat of 279 tons. Her wage-list and expense-account have been taken as a basis of the illustration above given, partly from recollection, and partly from figures which I made when I was second clerk, and which I have had before me in writing this chapter. We used to tow one barge all the time—most of the time two barges, and both boat and barges loaded to the water line, both ways, nearly every trip.
Of course we sometimes missed it. We landed ten thousand sacks of wheat at Prairie du Chien on one trip. Instead of a hundred and fifty cabin passengers, she often carried three hundred, "sleeping them" on the cabin floor three deep—at stateroom rates; and under such conditions the fortunate winners of such a chance to get into the promised land have risen up and called the whole outfit blessed, when in fact it was the other thing. I have heard of other boats claiming that they had to tow an extra barge to carry the money which they took in on the trip. I have always thought that these men were slightly overstating the case—but maybe not.
An item in one of the St. Paul papers of the time, states that the "Excelsior" arrived from St. Louis November 20, 1852, with two hundred and fifty cabin passengers, one hundred and fifty deck passengers, and three hundred tons of freight. For which freight she received "one dollar per hundred for any distance"; and the net profits of the up trip on freight alone were over $8,000. For two hundred and fifty cabin passengers she would receive $16 each, or $4,000; for the deck passengers, $8 each, or $1,200. These sums added to the $8,000 received for freight, would aggregate $13,200. The "Excelsior" cost not to exceed $20,000—probably not over $16,000. Two trips like this would build a better boat. As this was the last trip of the season, she probably did not get such another. Under that freight rate—"one dollar per hundred for any distance"—a shipment of a hundred pounds from Prescott to Point Douglass, one mile, would cost the shipper a dollar. There were possibilities in such conditions.
Another item, also from a St. Paul paper, states that the "Lady Franklin" arrived May 8, 1855, from Galena, with five hundred passengers. She would accommodate a hundred and fifty cabin people, ordinarily. Figure this trip down to the probabilities, and the net result would be about as follows:
| 300 cabin passengers at $12 | $3,600 |
| 200 deck passengers at $6 | 1,200 |
| ———— | |
| Net earnings for the season | $4,800 |
| 200 cabin passengers at $12 | $2,400 |
| 300 deck passengers at $6 | 1,800 |
| ———— | |
| Net earnings for the season | $4,200 |