Waterways and Water Transport in Different Countries / With a description of the Panama, Suez, Manchester, Nicaraguan, and other canals.

by J. Stephen Jeans

[CHAPTER XXVII.]
COMPARATIVE COST OF WATER AND LAND TRANSPORT.

There is no matter connected with the trade and commerce of a country that is of greater importance to its welfare than cheap transport. The business of transportation, both by land and by sea, is now one of the most gigantic in the history of the world. The railways of the United Kingdom received in 1887, for the transport of goods and passengers together, not less than 71 millions sterling, which is approximately about 6 per cent. of the whole national income from all sources. The railways of the United States in the same year had a total income of about 1000 millions of dollars, or 200 millions sterling, which is probably a still larger percentage of the total income of that country. It is the same in other European countries. Transportation is becoming a larger factor than before in the income and expenditure of all civilised nations.

The same considerations apply to the over-sea trade. The tonnage of vessels that entered and cleared from British ports in the foreign trade of 1889 was over 67 millions of tons, which would probably represent at least as many millions sterling for freights. In addition to this enormous business in the over-sea trade, our coasting trade was represented in 1889 by over 90 million tons of entrances and clearances, which would probably add 20 to 25 millions additional to the gross income of our shipping interest, bringing up the total tonnage that entered and cleared from our ports in 1889 to 157 millions, and the gross income resulting from the business of transportation by sea to, approximately, about 90 millions sterling.

The United States have no such record as this to show for their foreign trade, their foreign entrances and clearances for 1888 having amounted to only 31 millions of tons. But the internal trade of the United States, on the lakes, rivers, and canals, will probably be at least double this figure, so that the traffic dealt with is enormous. The foreign trade of the United States has more than trebled since 1864, and is still increasing at a very rapid rate.

These figures are quoted in order that the vast character of this business of transportation, and its consequent importance, may be duly appreciated. Manifestly, it is of great moment that the technical conditions which influence the cost of transport should be as perfect as possible, and that the most economical methods of carrying on the business of a country from this point of view, should be put into operation.

There is, however, a great absence of agreement, even among experts, as to what those conditions are, resulting, no doubt, from the great variety of circumstances by which they are governed. On land, the cost of haulage is necessarily determined by such considerations as the cost of fuel, the proportions of tare to live load, the character of the gradients, the adaptability of the rolling stock to the traffic, and other elements of a more or less technical description. These introduce so much variety of experience, and such conflict of results, that the cost of transport is seldom or never in any two cases exactly the same; and the figures that would be given by one authority on the subject would probably be disputed by another, so that it is to this day, after the railway system has been at work for over sixty years, and has become the dominating factor in our commercial, social, and political organisation, an extremely difficult matter to arrive at reliable data, or, at any rate, at such data as would be generally accepted as correct, relative to the actual cost of transport under given conditions.

It may, of course, be argued that the actual charges imposed by the railway companies is a likely criterion of the cost of the service. But there could hardly be a greater fallacy. In the United Kingdom the railway companies openly proclaim that the amount that a particular traffic will bear, and not the cost of the services rendered, is their basis of charge.[234] In no two countries, moreover, are the charges even approximately the same, and finally the charges vary in the same country, and vary considerably from year to year. As an example, it may be remarked that in the United States the average freight charge per ton per mile in 1887 was only 1·06 cents, or roughly a halfpenny per ton per mile, for all kinds of traffic, whereas in 1868 it was as much as 2·45 cents, or 1·22d. per ton per mile.[235] It is not pretended, of course, that this striking difference represents the difference that has, in the interval, occurred in the actual cost of transport. That the cost of transport has been reduced goes without saying, but the American railways are also now content to accept much smaller profits than formerly.

In the United Kingdom, however, the average ton-mile rates for the transport of railway traffic are much higher than in the United States, or in any of the principal countries of the Continent. This higher rate of charge is defended on the ground that the cost of railways has in England been much higher than in any other country. The charges are fixed, therefore, not according to the actual cost of the haulage and working of the traffic, but according to the amount required to perform that operation, plus the payment of dividends upon an abnormally, and, as some think, unnecessarily and unjustifiably, large capital outlay.[236]

Under these circumstances, there has been a constant conflict between the traders and the railway companies relative to traffic charges. The trading community has naturally been desirous of paying only for services actually rendered, and have sought to ascertain what those services have cost. The railways, however—at any rate in the United Kingdom—have withheld this information, and as they have also declined, in the main, to bring down their charges to a level that would give traders more chance in competition with foreign countries, the latter have in some directions sought to fall back upon water transport, which is generally believed to be a cheaper mode of transport than that provided by any railway, however cheaply constructed or well managed.

Even, however, in the matter of water transport there are differences that appear to render perfectly hopeless any attempt to ascertain what is the actual cost of working per unit of traffic, and what is, accordingly, the charges that the traffic ought to be called on to pay. It will be found that this cost, like that of railway transport, is affected by many elements—by the size of the canal and of the vessels employed, by the number of locks and their mechanical arrangements, by the rate of speed, by the system of traction employed, and by other obvious differences that we shall refer to later on. It is these differences, and their effect on the cost of working canal traffic, and on the consequent rates charged, that we now propose to consider.