The Great Lakes / The Vessels That Plough Them: Their Owners, Their Sailors, and Their Cargoes, Together with a Brief History of Our Inland Seas

by James Oliver Curwood

But in the place of this passing industry is rapidly growing another, the effect of which is already being felt over half of the civilised world, and which in a very few years from now will be counted the greatest and most important commerce in existence. The iron mines of the North may become exhausted, the little remaining forest of the Lake regions will fade away; but the grain trade will go on forever. Just as the Superior mines have produced cheap iron and steel, just as the Inland Seas have been the means of giving the nation cheap lumber, so will they for all time to come supply unnumbered millions with cheap bread. Like great links, they connect the vast grain-producing West with the millions of the bread-consuming East. And not only do they control the grain traffic of the United States. To-day western Canada is spoken of as the future “Bread Basket of the World,” and over the Lakes will travel the bulk of its grain. Looking ahead for a dozen centuries, one cannot see where there can be a monopoly of grain transportation, either by railroad or ship. The water highways are every man’s property; a few thousand dollars—a ship—and you are your own master, to go where you please, carry what you please, and at any price you please. For all time, in the carrying of grain from field to mouth, the Great Lakes will prove themselves the poor man’s friend. To bring this poor man’s bushel of wheat over the one thousand miles from Duluth to Buffalo by Lake now costs only two cents.

And according to the predictions of some of the oldest ship-owners of the Lakes, the tremendous saving to the poor man because of the cheapness of Lake freightage is bound to increase in the not distant future. It must be remembered that at the present time ships are not built too fast for Lake demand, and as a consequence transportation rates, while exceedingly low when compared with rail rates, are such as to make fortunes each year for the owners of ships. Take the cargo of the B. F. Jones, for instance, delivered at Buffalo in October of 1906. She had on board 370,273 bushels of wheat which she had brought from Duluth at two and three fourths cents a bushel, making her four-day trip down pay to the tune of $7500! The preceding year one cargo of 300,000 bushels was brought down for six cents a bushel, a very extraordinary exception to the regular cheap rate—one of the exceptions which come during the last week or two of navigation. The freight paid on this cargo was $18,000. In other words, if this vessel had made but this one trip during the season the profit on the total investment of $300,000 represented by the ship would have been six per cent. There are on the Lakes vessels which pay from twenty to thirty per cent. a year, and an “ordinary earner” is supposed to run from ten to twenty.

In viewing these enormous profits, however, the layman has no cause for complaint, for the vessels that make them do so not to his cost, but from the rapidity with which they achieve their work. The W. B. Kerr is a vessel that can carry 400,000 bushels of wheat. Figure that she makes twenty trips a season. If she carried grain continually she would transport a total of 8,000,000 bushels in a single season, which would supply Chicago with bread for nearly a year and a half. And it is an interesting fact, too, that with few exceptions the ships of the Lakes are not owned by corporations, but by the American people. Their stock is held, not by thousands, but by hundreds of thousands. Recognised as among the best and safest investments in the United States, they are the property of farmers, mechanics, clerks, and other small investors, as well as of capitalists. Recently one of the largest shipbuilders on the Lakes said to me, “A third of the farmers in the Lake counties of Ohio have money invested in shipping.” Which shows that not only in the way of cheap transportation are the common people of the country profiting because of the existence of our Inland Seas. It may be interesting to note at this point that the tonnage shipped and received at Ohio ports in 1907 exceeded that of all the ports of France.

The rate at which the grain traffic of the Lakes is increasing is easily seen in the figures of the last few years. In 1905, over 68,000,000 bushels of wheat passed through the “Soo” canals. In 1906, this increased to more than 84,000,000, showing a growth in one year of 16,000,000 bushels, or 23 per cent. This rate of increase is not only being maintained, but it is becoming larger; and the grain men of the Lakes are unanimous in the opinion that even from the big increase of recent years cannot be figured the future grain business of the Inland Seas.

“Ten years more will see the American and Canadian Wests feeding the world,” a grain dealer tells me. “Within that time I look to see the wheat production of North America not only doubled, but trebled.”

The Old and the New.

A modern freight carrier passing one of the old schooners.

What western Canada is destined to mean to Lake commerce is already shown in marine figures. From Port Arthur and Fort William, the “twin cities” of Thunder Bay, were shipped in 1907 over 60,000,000 bushels of grain, and it is safe to predict that the shipment of these two little cities will this year exceed 70,000,000 bushels. The largest elevator in the world, with a capacity of 7,500,000 bushels, has been constructed at Port Arthur; and Fort William already has a capacity of 13,000,000 bushels.

And as yet the fertile regions of western Canada have hardly been touched! These 70,000,000 bushels of 1909 will represent part of the production, not of a nation, but of a comparatively few pioneers in what is destined to become the greatest grain-growing country in the world—a country connected with the East and the waterways to Europe by the Five Great Lakes. When the task now under way of widening and deepening the Erie Canal is accomplished, the enormous Lake traffic in grain may continue without interruption to the Atlantic coast. Even as it is, the transportation of grain from Buffalo to New York by canal is showing a phenomenal increase. The value of the freight cleared by canal from Buffalo in 1907 was nearly $19,000,000, while in 1905 it was less than $12,000,000.