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14 : MARINE. REVIEW. Stock Company to Control Erie Canal Boats. Erastus Wiman has been visiting lake cities within the past week in the interest of his scheme to form a stock company for the purpose of buying up all of the better class of wooden vessels on the Erie canal and operating them with more system than has attended their management under several hundred owners. As outlined by himself, Mr. Wiman's plans seem more practical than the statements con- tained in newspaper dispatches regarding the proposed combination, He has talked with Capt. James Davidson of West Bay City, and other builders regarding the cost of constructing a large number of wooden canal vessels and he seems to be very well posted as to the disadvantages under which the canal boatmen are working. It is not Mr. Wiman's intention to attempt the use of the canal boats for lake navigation, even on Lake Erie. His aim is, first, organization of the canal in- terests by consolidation and new equipment; second, the creation ~ of responsibility to furnish an undisputed bill of lading; third, to provide improved terminal facilities at New York and Buffalo. Toa Detroit Free Press reporter Mr. Wiman said: "My plan is to have the stock company composed of all Erie ~ canal boatmen who wish to enter it and also of men who will furnish new capital, the first aim being to establish a commercial standing for men in the business. The Erie canal has been a dead duck for many years. The boatmen have been starving, with but small intermis- sions, simply because they have never pulled together in the terrible fight which the trunk lines have waged against them. Last year the canal carried 900 barrels of flour to the seaboard against the railroad's 11,000,000 barrels. The traffic of the canal has been cared for by 500 owners of canal boats and the most of these boats are the sorriest old things known to man.. The principal reason for the loss of business to them was the inability of the northwestern millers to furnish to their banks through bills of lading by canal to the east on which to borrow money necessary to carry on their business. We will say that Pillsbury, for instance, makes 20,000 barrels of flour today. If this flour went by Erie canal it would have to be divided --with the present equipment of boats--among adozen boatmen. The banker would have to look into the financial and physical ability of these boatmen to carry the flour before he would advance a cent on it, and at the end of several days he would find that the boat traffic would be very, uncertain, and he would refuse to loan the money. - Even if he were willing to loan it the miller and himself could not stand the delay of inquiry and the still greater delay in getting it to its destination. For this. reason and because the railroads can carry it cheaper the canal has lost all the flour business, and:most of the - general traffic besides. I propose to organize these men into one company that shall be a big concern, with large capital, and a high | - commercial rating, where they now have none. It is to be chartered by the State of New York. It shall have an equipment of wooden _ boats in tows that shall be strictly modern. No, the steel canal boat is too much 'of an experiment to suit me, and besides I am not yet 'ready to go into the business. of lake Eid canal transportation by the same boats. I have been figuring with James Davidson of West Bay City and with other lake builders to build these boats, but have closed no deal as yet. I would make up a tow of five consorts and one steamer at atime. The steamer would push one consort on ahead and would tow four others, which would float along side by side, in twos. That, tomy notion, is the most feasible style of canal propul. sion. I do not fayor electricity. It is not a reality as yet in the canal business. Each tow would have a capacity of 15.000 barrels of flour, and would make the trip from Buffalo to tidewater in six and a half days. The average time of the railroads in getting from Cleve- land to New York for one. year was twelve days, because of the delays on account of congested traffic. The congestion of cars in New York last winter was simply dreadful. The delay of flour laden cars alone at one time would have made them into a train thirty miles long. Furthermore, every car of flour delivered in New York costs $12 in lighterage, and this the canal saves entirely. This is equal to 6 cents a barrel--it equals a dividend on the sum of $8,000,000 for which a certain big flour-milling plant was sold to an English syndi- eate. This saving will be effected in the canal businses by terminals at both Buffalo and New York and free trausfer storage facilities for thirty days to all shippers ofwhatever nature. "The people of New York city and state will aid this project in every way possible. They realize that the state, city and canal have been losing commerce because of its diversion to southern points by the enterprising western railroads, these southern points being Galveston, New Orleans, Newport News and Baltimore, and Phila- delphia has taken some of it, and this galls the New Yorker. The people of New York will grant terminal privileges that not even the railroads can prevent. They showed this last winter when they voted $9,000,000 for improvement of the canals. They are anxious to see these waterways built up to something that will bring back their old standard of prosperity. "Of course we expect opposition from the railways, as we expect when our plans are matured that the cost of moving flour and other products to the seaboard by water will not be more than 1 mill per ton per mile. The Pennsylvania company figures that the cheapest at which the railroads can carry it is 5 mills, and of course they are and have been carrying it for several times that amount. This movement of commerce to the sea iS the greatest, and is of more importance to the people of this country than any that is before the consideration of man. I figure that in the first year, with the improved canal, we would carry 900,000 barrels of flour; in the second year 2 - 000,000, and in the third 6,000,000. This last figure is more than 50 per cent. of what the railroads are carrying, but at the end of three years the country and its traffic will have grown to much greater dimensions. I do not see how the railroads could, anyhow, hurt us by cutting rates. According to the agreement among themselves, in the form of a joint traffic association--which is a pool of earnings on an equitable basis that enables all to live--their rates are set to a certain standard, and this standard gives them a fair profit over and above operating expenses. If this is cut they will be down to a starva- tion basis, and then the association would go to pieces and the best of thei would so feel the effect of competition among themelves, aided by competition from us, that some of them, at least, would be ruined. They might hurt us by ordering the western roads to refuse to deliver to.us. "*Hinormous forces are at work in favor of this scheme. The en- tire northwest is heartily in accord with it. Canal boatmen are will- ing to enter into anything that promises relief from the depression through which they have lived. Neither the millers nor the farmers have made a -cent in the last five years, with the exception of the present little spurt. The reasons for it are plain. It is due to competi- tion from the Argentine and other countries, from which the wheat and other products are shipped at the edge of the continent, with little or nothing to pay in the way of freight or port charges, with both of which the American farmer and miller are badly handicapped."' Miscellaneous Matters. The new Cleveland Insurance Co., which was incorporated a few days ago by Goulder & Holding, Cleveland attorneys, will have a capital of -$200,000'and -a surplus of $200,000. Among names attending the incorporation are J. J. Sullivan, M. A. Hanna and L. EK. Holden. The company will undoubtedly be very strong financial- ly. It is the intention to doa marine business next year but: the beginning will be in fire insurance. It is unfortunate that the steamer Kearsarge, which struck in the Sault river, Wednesday, should meet with an accident at the tail end of the season. She was bound down on her twenty-seventh trip with package freight from Lake Superior. This record is in itself the greatest ever attained in the package freight trade on the lakes, but the Kearsarge would have made twenty-eight trips if she had not met with the accident. She may yet make another trip. The big German steamship companies seem to be ordering new vessels along wholesale lines. Now it is announced that the Ham- burg American Steam Packet Co., following the other big lines, has let contracts for four large steamers. Blohm & Voss of Hamburg, and another German firm, are to build one steamer each, while Har- land & Wolff of Belfast are to build two. Harland & Wolff will receive $700,000 each for the vessels, which are to be 500 feet in length by 62 feet beam, and to have a deadweight capacity of about 12,000 tons. Secretary Herbert seems to be encouraging the plan of sending young naval constructors abroad to complete their education in naval architecture. He has just arranged matters so that Cadet Wm. G. Grovesbeck, a young man who entered the naval academy from Indiana, goes to the University of Glasgow. Mr. Grovesbeck is the sixth man selected from his class to go abroad for higher education of this kind. Of the six, three are at Glasgow, two at Greenwich and one at Paris. ed