I have gone into these facts with some detail for the purpose of showing that the extreme cheapness of travel and living along the Lakes does not signify a loss of either comfort or luxury. In few words, it means that the Lakes, as in all other branches of their industries, are agents of tremendous saving to the nation at large in this one; and that, were the pleasure-seekers and travellers of the country to become better acquainted with them, the annual “dividend” earned in freight transportation would be doubled by passenger traffic. The figures of almost any transportation line on the Lakes will verify this. Last year, for instance, one line carried two hundred thousand people between Detroit and Cleveland. The day fare between these points is one dollar, the distance 110 miles. Estimating that four fifths, or one hundred and sixty thousand, of these passengers travelled by day, their total expense would be $160,000. By rail the distance is 167 miles, and the fare $3.35, making a total railway fare of $536,000. These figures show that one passenger line alone, and between just two cities, saved the travellers of the country $376,000 in 1908. The saving between other points is in many instances even greater. Once each week one may go by water from Detroit to Buffalo, or from Buffalo to Detroit, a distance of 260 miles, for $1.25, while the rail rate is seven dollars; and at any time during the week, and on any boat, the fare is only $2.50. These low rates prevail, not only in localities, but all over the Lakes. The tourist may board a Mackinaw boat at any time in Cleveland, for instance, travel across Lake Erie, up the Detroit River, through Lake St. Clair and Lake Huron, and back again—a round trip of nearly one thousand miles—at an expense of ten dollars. The round trip from Detroit to Mackinaw, which gives the tourist two days and two nights aboard ship and a ride of six hundred miles, costs eight dollars. The rail fare is $11. At a ticket expense of less than twenty-five dollars one may spend a whole week aboard a floating palace of the Lakes and make a tour of the Inland Seas that will carry him over nearly three thousand miles of waterway, his meal service at the same time being as good and from a third to a half as expensive as that of a first-class hotel ashore. Excursion rates, which one may take advantage of during the entire season, are even less, frequently being not more than half as high as those given above.
When one becomes acquainted with these facts it is easy for him to understand the truth of Mr. Schantz’s statement that “people don’t know about the Lakes.” If they did, the annual passenger traffic on them would be thirty million instead of sixteen; and, instead of an estimated saving of ten million dollars to the people because of Lake passenger ships, the “dividend” that thus goes into their pockets would be twice that amount.
The “City of Erie.”
The fastest steamer on the Lakes, holding a record of 22.93 miles per hour.
Foreign shipbuilders as well as Americans along the seacoasts frankly concede that vessel-building on the Lakes has developed into a science which is equalled nowhere else in the world, evidence of which I have offered in a former article. This is true of passenger ships as well as of freighters, and the strongest proof of this fact lies in the almost inconceivably small loss of life among travellers on the Lakes. There was a time when the marine tragedies of the Inland Seas were appalling, and if all the ships lost upon them were evenly distributed there would be a sunken hulk every half-mile over the entire thousand-mile waterway between Buffalo and Duluth. But those days are gone. Lake travel has not only become the cheapest in the world, but the safest as well. The figures which show this are of tremendous interest when compared with other statistics. Of the sixteen million men, women, and children who travelled on Lake passenger ships in 1907, only three were lost, or one out of every 5,300,000. Two of these were accidentally drowned, and the third met death by fire. The percentage of ocean casualties is twelve times as great, and of the eight hundred million people who travelled on our railroads during 1906 approximately one out of every sixty thousand was killed or injured.
To the great majority of our many millions of people the summer life of the Lakes is as little known as the passenger traffic. And, if possible, it offers even greater inducements, especially to those who wish to enjoy the pleasures of an ideal summer outing and who can afford to spend but a very small sum of money. Notwithstanding this fact, the shores and countless islands of the Great Lakes are taken advantage of even less than their low transportation rates. Only a few of the large and widely-advertised resorts receive anything like the patronage of seacoast pleasure grounds. If a person in the East or West, for instance, plans to spend a month somewhere along the Lakes, about the only information that he can easily obtain is on points like Mackinaw Island: popular resorts which are ideal for the tourist who wishes to pass most of his time aboard ship, or who, in stopping off at these more fashionable places, is not especially worried about funds.
It is not of such isolated places as the great resorts that I shall speak first. They play their part, and an important one, in the summer life of the Lakes; but it is to another phase of this life, one which is almost entirely unknown, that I wish to call attention. The man who does not have to count the contents of his pocket-book when he leaves home will find his holiday joys without much trouble. But how about the man who works for a small salary, and who with his restricted means wishes to give his wife and children the pleasures of a real vacation? What about the men and women and children who look forward for weeks and months, and who plan and save and economise, sometimes hopelessly, that somewhere they may have two weeks together, free from the worry and care and eternal grind of their daily life? It is to such people as these, unnumbered thousands of them, that the Lakes should call—and loudly. And it is to such as these that I wish to describe the astonishing conditions which now exist along thousands of miles of our Great Lakes coast line—conditions which, were they generally known, would attract many million more people to our Inland Seas next year than will be found there during the present summer.
“But where shall I go?” asks the man who is planning a vacation, and who may live two or three hundred miles away from the nearest of the Great Lakes. He is perplexed, and with good cause. He has spent other vacations away from home and generally speaking he knows what a hold-up game ordinary summer-resort life is. But he need not fear this on the Lakes. All that he has to do in order successfully to solve this problem of “where to go” is to get a map, select any little town or village situated on the fresh-water sea nearest to him, or three or four of them, for that matter, and write to the postmasters. They can turn the communications over to some person who will interest himself to that extent. Say, for instance, that you write to the little port of Vermilion, on Lake Erie. Your reply will state that “Shattuck’s Grove would be a nice place for you to spend your holidays; or you may go to Ruggles’ Grove, half a dozen miles up the beach; or you can get cheap accommodations, board and room for three or four dollars a week apiece, at any one of a hundred farmhouses that look right out over the lake.” In fact, it is not necessary for you to write at all. When you are ready to leave on your vacation, when your trunk is ready and the wife and children all aglow with eagerness and expectancy—why, start. Go direct to any one of these little Lake towns. Within a day after arriving there, or within two days at the most, you will be settled. I have passed nearly all of my life along the Lakes, and have travelled over every mile of the Lake Erie shore; I have gone from end to end of them all, and I do not know of a Lake town that does not possess in its immediate vicinity what is locally known as a “grove.” A grove, on the Lakes, means a piece of woods that the owner has cleared of underbrush, where the children may buy ice-cream and candy, where there are plenty of swings, boats, fishing-tackle, and perhaps a merry-go-round, and where the pleasure-seeker may rent a tent at almost no cost, buy his meals at ridiculously low prices and live entirely on the grounds, or board with some farmer in the neighbourhood. A “grove,” in other words, is what might be called a rural resort, a place visited almost entirely by country people and the residents of neighbouring towns, and where one may fish, swim, and enjoy the most glorious of all vacations for no more than it would cost him to live at home, and frequently for less.
