the work demanded of them; when the assistance of the waterway would be valuable, both as a carrier and as tending to relieve congestion by increasing the number and extending the geographical and necessary distribution of terminals. And he has worked to that end. You cannot find a man eminent in railroading in this country to-day who is not also an ardent advocate of waterway improvement. Let us start right by dismissing this bogey of envy and baseless opposition. Senator Knox has stated the case correctly in these terse words: "European experience has established the law that with waterways carrying the slow and heavy freights which most congest the railways and on which their return is most narrow, the growth of industry and population more than compensates them in the growth of their high-class freight, express, mail and passenger traffic."

Understanding, then, that railroads and waterways are to work together for the development of this country and the betterment of its people, how can each be aided most in discharging its vast and valuable functions in the national economy? I have already stated on different occasions the determining facts bearing upon the future of railroading in this country. The passage of time only intensifies the difficulties of the situation. Two years ago I pointed out that, in the ten years between 1895 and 1905, the railroad mileage of the country had increased but 21 per cent., while the passenger business had grown 95 per cent. and the freight business 118 per cent. The latest report of the Interstate Commerce Commission carries an even graver warning. By the decade ending in 1907, the increase of mileage as compared with 1897 had crept up to 24.7 per cent.; but in the same time the increase of passenger business had leaped to 126.1 per cent., and that of freight traffic to 148.7 per cent.

The country was saved from a complete traffic breakdown only by increasing operating efficiency after it had already been raised apparently to the limit. Density of traffic might have been thought to have reached its maximum in 1906, when every railroad performed prodigies in order to do the work required of it. Yet the increase of density in 1907 on the entire railroad system of the country was 69,718 freight tons for every mile of line, or about 20 tons per mile for every day in the year. I have for years been urging that the building up of a transportation machine commensurate with the growth of the country should not only be permitted but encouraged in the only two possible ways: First, by encouraging capital to invest in railroad construction, instead of scaring it away by hostile and unjust legislation; and, second, by a comprehensive and

rational system of waterway improvement. There is no other way now, nor will there ever be, by which the business of the country can be done..

It will be the deep waterway that helps business, just as it is the deep harbor that has built up trade and lowered rates by making it possible to run boats of greater tonnage. I said a year ago to the members of the National Rivers and Harbors Congress that they should work for a fifteen-foot channel in the Mississippi and that eighteen or twenty would be twice as good. If you have a waterway, you want it deep enough to do business. A barge that carries only 1,000 tons cannot compete with a box car. With a steamer carrying 10,000 tons you have beaten it. Twenty years ago the largest carriers on the lakes that could pass through the old "Soo" canal, with its fourteen-foot locks, were about 3,000 tons. To-day an ordinary load is 10,000 or 12,000 tons. The canal has been deepened to twenty-one feet, and with what result? The commerce of the Great Lakes is one of the wonders of the world. Twenty years ago Duluth was a little town with a promising local trade only. To-day it is one of the great shipping ports of the world, with unlimited possibilities of expansion. For 1905 the total tonnage of New York harbor, foreign and coastwise, was 30,314,062. For 1906 Chicago's tonnage was 15,638,051. That of Liverpool and Birkenhead in 1906 was 16,147,856, and London's in 1905 was 25,867,485. The government report for the year 1907 gives the tonnage of the Duluth-Superior harbor at 34,786,705, with a valuation of $287,529,705. Deep harbors on the lakes, admitting the use of big freighters, have made such growth in all our lake cities possible. The first principle of river improvement, then, is that these shall be made deep waterways; real and not useless arteries for commerce. . .

Waterways should be made as other great works are created. The first railroads did not begin in the heart of the country and end nowhere. They were lines between important centers and terminal points; and extensions, branches and feeders were added as needed. That is what waterway improvement needs. Locate your trunk lines first. Open a way to the sea by the biggest, freest outlet. Push the work as nature indicates, from the seacoast up the rivers. And this, of course, should be done with ample resources according to a general scheme which will include reservoirs on the head waters of the main stream and as many of its tributaries as may be necessary to prevent floods and maintain a deep channel in the dry season; together with such canalization of the river, or canal construction

parallel with its course, as will assure a sufficient and permanent channel for boats of the largest size during the season of navigation.

There would be general agreement, probably, that the lower Mississippi, from New Orleans to St. Louis, should first be opened to navigation; and that the deep water connection with the lakes should come next. And it is as important that the order of these improvements be not reversed as it is that you do not set the water running in your bathroom before you have provided an escape pipe and a sewer connection. The Mississippi basin contains two-fifths of the area of the United States; more than half its population lives in States touching the navigable portions of the great river and its tributaries, and its products feed the world. We have really done nothing permanent yet to make it a navigable river. Protection of caving banks, revetment, dredging and snag-pulling are only temporary expedients. The river is not and cannot now be used as a carrier ought to be if it is to play a part in national transportation. In 1888 there were 3,323 boats and barges, carrying 597,955 tons of freight, besides lumber and logs, arriving at St. Louis. In 1907 there were 1,330, carrying 289,575 tons. The departures in 1888 numbered 2,076, with 510,115 tons; in 1907 they were 931, with 78,500 tons. There is small reason to wonder at the decline when the government record of river stages shows the lowest gauge, which, of course, governs the whole steamboat business, to have been four feet and threetenths in one month of 1907, and for six months to have been no higher than eight and one-tenth feet at St. Louis. Yet in the last forty years the government has spent $250,000,000 on the Mississippi and its more important branches. . .

The future of the waterway as a factor in transportation cannot be injured except by folly. The essentials for developing its highest possibilities are few and simple. Let me, for clearness, repeat them. First, a permanent commission, authorized to expend appropriations in its discretion upon national waterways in the order of their importance. Second, a comprehensive plan including the classification of rivers and canal routes in the order of their value, including also such reservoir and slackwater work as may be required for the working out of each project to success. This plan in its essentials to be adopted by the commission at the outset and adhered to without interference by Congress or any department. Third, insistence upon the development of trunk lines first, and upon a depth that will make these real carriers of commerce, able to aid the railroads in their staggering task and to transport bulky freight expeditiously and

economically. Fourth, a liberal standing appropriation annually for the commission's work until its plans shall have been carried out over the whole country; and a refusal to ask the pledge of the nation's credit for a single dollar of this, which is properly our work.

V. COMMUNICATION

A. Development of Telegraph and Telephone Systems, 1844-19071

The extension of the telegraph service to all parts of the country has tended to eliminate distances and thus to facilitate business. Scarcely a village is without its telephones, and even thousands of farmers have telephonic connection with each other and with adjoining towns and cities.

The first telegraph line in the United States was opened for business in 1844, and thirty-two years later the telephone was introduced. In the early stages of its development the telephone industry was associated with the telegraph industry, but the two have now long been distinct, and the telephone is to some extent a competitor of the telegraph for the business of long-distance communication, although recently the leading telephone company has acquired a large stock interest in one of the leading telegraph companies. At the census of 1880 the telegraph companies reported the operation of 291,213 miles of wire as compared with 34,305 miles reported for the telephone companies. By the census of 1902 the amount of wire for the telegraph systems had increased to 1,318,350 miles and that for the telephone systems to 4,900,451 miles. Thus in 1902 the mileage of wire devoted to the transmission of telephone messages was almost four times as great as that used for telegraph purposes.

Both industries developed rapidly between 1902 and 1907, and by the end of that period the mileage of single wire devoted primarily to the telephone business was eight times as great as the mileage used for the commercial telegraph business.

In the amount of business done in 1907, the amount paid in salaries and wages during the year, and the capital invested, the telephone business was more than three and one-half times as extensive as the telegraph industry, and during the year it furnished employment for more than five times as many persons.

In 1907 a total of 14,570,142 miles of wire was in use for the transmission of commercial messages, and of this total, 12,999,369 miles, or 89.2 per cent, were used primarily for telephone messages,

1 Department of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of the Census. Special Reports. Telephone: 1907 (Washington, 1910), 15-18.

and 1,570,773 miles, or 10.8 per cent, for the telegraph business. The telephone business has increased more rapidly than the other branch of the industry. Between 1902 and 1907 there was an addition of 8,098,918 miles of wire for the use of the telephone systems of the country as compared with an increase of 259,611 in the mileage of owned and leased wire for the use of commercial telegraph systems.. The increase in the wire mileage of the telephone systems during that period of five years is more than six times as great as the total amount of existing wire that has been added to the telegraph business since the date when the first statistics concerning the industry were gathered.

The development of the long-distance telephone system and the increasing use by railway companies of the telephone for the dispatch of business have necessarily had some effect on the extension of the use of the telegraph. Naturally the increase in the use of the telephone has greatly outdistanced the increase in the use of the telegraph. . . .

At the close of 1907 the amount of wire in use by the telephone systems of the country exceeded that in use in 1902 by more than 8,000,000 miles, and the other leading items showed proportionately large increases. It is especially interesting to learn that the industry gave regular employment to 65,417 more persons in 1907 than it did five years earlier, and that the amount expended in salaries and wages was greater by $32,023,506 in 1907 than in 1902.

Until recent years the field of operation of a telephone system was restricted to a comparatively small area, but the introduction of the long-distance lines and the arrangements for toll service between neighboring companies have made communication possible between widely separated sections of the country with a facility which of itself has contributed to increase the business of the industry.

Naturally the most extensive equipment and the greatest amount of business are found in the states that have the largest population. . . . The industry is largely concentrated in the populous North Atlantic and North Central states, and the greatest amount of increase between the years 1902 and 1907 in wire mileage, telephones, and business is shown for these states. More rapid rates of increase occurred in other sections, however, and the largest percentages of gain for wire mileage are shown for the Western, South Central, and South Atlantic states, where, as a rule, the telephones are farther apart than in the other divisions. The Western states had the largest percentages of increase also in the number of telephones and messages or talks. In accepting the percentages of increase the relative size