Commercial Geography / A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges

by Jacques W. Redway

An excellent system of canals, the Ohio and Erie and the Miami and Erie, connect the Ohio River with Lake Erie. These canals are in the State of Ohio and aggregate about six hundred miles in length. They are important as coal and ore carriers. Several hundred miles of canals were built along the river-valleys of eastern Pennsylvania before 1840 for carrying coal to tide-water. Most of them have been abandoned; one, the Delaware & Hudson Canal Co., survives as a railway. Inasmuch as the coal went on a down grade from the mines to the markets, it could be carried more economically by railway than by canal.

Of far greater importance are the St. Marys Canal on the Canadian side, and the St. Marys Falls Canal on the American side, of St. Marys River. These canals obviate the falls in St. Marys River and form the commercial outlet of Lake Superior. The tonnage of goods, mainly iron ore and coal, is about one-half greater than that of the Suez Canal. About twenty-five thousand vessels pass through these canals yearly.

The Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal,[10] from Lake Michigan to Lockport, on the Illinois River, was designed mainly to carry the sewage of Chicago which, prior to the construction of the canal, was poured into the lake through the Chicago River. The completion of the canal turned the course of the river and caused the water to flow out of the lake, carrying the city's sewage. It is intended to complete a navigable water-way from Chicago to St. Louis deep enough for vessels drawing fourteen feet. Its value is therefore strategic as well as industrial, for by means of it gun-boats may readily pass from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes.

Oceanic canals are designed both for naval strategic purposes and for industrial uses. Thus, the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal, from the mouth of the Elbe to Kiel Bay, across the base of Jutland, saves two days between Hamburg and the Baltic ports. It also enables German war-vessels to concentrate quickly in either the North or the Baltic Sea. The Manchester Ship Canal makes Manchester a seaport and saves the cost of trans-shipping freights by rail from Liverpool. The Corinth Canal across the isthmus that joins the Peloponnesus to the mainland of Greece affords a much shorter route between Italian ports and Odessa. The North Holland Ship Canal makes Amsterdam practically a seaport.

Probably no other highway of commerce since the discovery of the Cape route around Africa has caused such a great change and readjustment of trade between Europe and Asia as the Suez Canal. Sailing-vessels still take the Cape route, because the heavy towage tolls through the canal more than offset the gain in time. Steamships have their own power and generally take the canal route, thereby saving about ten days in time and fuel, and about four thousand eight hundred miles in distance. In spite of the heavy tolls the saving is considerable. About three thousand five hundred vessels pass through the canal yearly.

The Suez Canal, constructed by Ferdinand de Lesseps, for some time was under the control of French capitalists. Subsequently, by the purchase of stock partly in open market and partly from the Khedive of Egypt, the control of the canal passed into the hands of the English. The restrictions placed upon the passage of war-ships is such that the canal would be of little use to nations at war.

The necessity of an interoceanic canal across the American continent has become more imperative year by year for fifty years. The discovery of gold in California caused an emigration from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast which resulted in a permanent settlement of the latter region. A railway across the Isthmus of Panama and another across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec have afforded very poor means of communication between oceans.

In 1881 work on a tide-level canal across the Isthmus of Panama was begun, but the plan was afterward changed to a high-level canal. The change was thought necessary partly on account of the great cost of the former, and partly because of the difficulties of constructing so deep a cut—about three hundred and forty feet—at the summit of the Culebra ridge. The construction company, after spending the entire capital—about one hundred and twenty million dollars—in accomplishing one-tenth of the work, became bankrupt. The United States subsequently purchased the franchise.