The Transportation Problem

THE TRANSPORTATION PROBLEM f 1. Natural waterways. § 2. The era of canals. § 3. Temporary wreck of inland water transportation. 4. Rapid building of American railroads. 5. Eras in the railroad problem. 6. Governmental aid to railroads. $ 7. Emergence of the railroad problem. 8. Discrim ination as to goods. 9. Local discrimination. I 10. Personal dis crimination. § 11. Economic power of railroad managers. 12. Polit ical power of railroad managers.

§ 1. Natural waterways. In

the simplest economic con ditions the moving of men and their material goods from one place to another was a very important part of economic ac tivity. Our elementary studies make clear that place change may be just as real and effective a way of increasing the value of goods as is form, stuff, or time change. Tens of thousands of years ago savage men began to supplement their comparatively weak powers as burden-carriers by using domestic animals, and to find other aids for carrying burdens in such instruments as yokes, litters, rafts, canoes, drags, and rude wheeled carts. Boats and ships on rivers, lakes, and seas early proved to be the least costly means of transpor tation for heavy weights and long distances; as the old saying goes, the oceans unite rather than divide the lands. Other means of transportation were naturally the shortest and most easily traversed caravan routes to navigable water, or portages between two waterways. A good system of natural water ways, while not reckoned among the private capital of a country, may be greater wealth to one nation than costly arti ficial means of transportation are to another.

In natural means of transportation, America was well en 477 dowed. The straight ocean coast-line measures 5700 miles, and the line following indentations of the coast is about 64,000 miles. The Great. Lakes, with a straight shore-line of 2760 miles, arc the most important inland waterways in the world. The 295 navigable rivers in the country have a length of 26,400 miles that might be navigable water.

The natural conditions of transportation and primarily the location of the navigable waters of oceans and rivers, deter mined entirely the location of industries and the spread of population in America until the eras of canals and railroads. The success of Fulton's steamboat in 1807, indeed, so in creased the importance of our natural inland waterways that they were the dominating feature of transportation in many parts of the country until after the Civil War. The successive

rise in importance, however, of two artificial kinds of trans portation is indicated by the terms "era of canals" and "era of railroads." § 2. The era of canals. Canals were used in the ancient empires for irrigating, for the supplying of cities with water, and for navigation. In the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries they were rapidly built in England and America. Six canals had been built in the United States before 1807, but the canal era in America dated from the beginning of work on the Erie Canal in 1817, and continued until about 1840 ; when nearly all new work ceased ; more than 4000 miles of canals had been built at a cost of $200,000,000. The New York State barge canal, costing more than $150,000,000, the most notable of our inland waterways, was opened for navigation May 10, 1918. It is the old Erie Canal, reconstructed to permit the passage of thousand ton barges. The great advantage of canals is cheapness of operation due to the simplicity of the machinery needed and to the great loads that can be moved with small power. A cent a ton-mile proved to be a paying rate on a small canal in the canal era. For heavy, slow-moving freight, a railroad can even now barely rival a parallel canal at its best. As canals, however, can be built only along fairly level routes and where the water supply is at high level, their construction is limited to a small portion of the coun try. The principle of diminishing returns applies strongly to the construction of canals: the first canals in favored loca tions are easily constructed and economically operated, but it is only with greater cost and difficulty that the system can be successively extended. In temperate climates the use of canals is limited by ice to a part of the year, and by the summer's drought sometimes still further. At its best, there fore, the small land-locked canal is fitted only to be a supple mentary agent in the system of transportation wherever an other transportation agency of higher speed and greater regu larity is possible. Far different is the case of the oceanic canal in a tropical climate.