No other port in the country has the capacity for this trinity of port systems.
No other port possesses such a hinterland as is embraced within the Mississippi Valley, nor so extensive and so complete a system of easy-grade railroads and navigable waterways penetrating its hinterland.
No other port holds so strategic a position in the path of the new trade routes connecting the region of greatest productivity with the new markets of greatest promise in Latin-America and the Orient.
LOCK GATE
There are Ten Like This
CONSTRUCTION COSTS AND CONTRACTORS.
Everything is relative. Looking at the total, some may think that the cost of the Industrial Canal is large. So it is—compared with the cost of an irrigation ditch through a 20-acre farm. But comparing the cost with the wealth it is invested to produce—has already begun to produce—it dwindles to a mere percentage. And a comparison of construction costs on the Industrial Canal with similar work done elsewhere during the same time is very much in favor of the former.
Witness the following figures shown in the books of the engineering department of the Dock Board:
Dredging, including the canal prism and the excavation of the sites of the bridge foundations, siphon and lock, averaged .2784 cents a cubic yard. The highest cost was in the lock section, from which 609,302 cubic yards were excavated at an average cost of .3796 cents a cubic yard. On the siphon and Florida Walk bridge section, including two other deep cuts, the 814,919 cubic yards excavated cost an average of .2607 cents a cubic yard. On the Louisville & Nashville bridge section, the 1,023,466 cubic yards excavated cost an average of .2363 cents a cubic yard. From there to the lake, 1,673,787 cubic yards, the average cost was .2411 cents. Dredging costs were below the original estimates when labor and supplies were 50 per cent cheaper.