Maritime History of the Great Lakes

Marine Review (Cleveland, OH), December 1913, p. 453

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December, 1913 in vichness baffling imagination and cosmopolitan as the wide world. Let us view this prospect from the point on the Missouri where those drawn lines unite her with the Canadian Pa- cific. From that point on the Missouri to the northern line of British Atha- baska the distance is the same as from the same point southward to Kansas: City, Mo. "Think. of that wide domain in the Winnipeg basin whose products, large in magnitude and but beginning to develop, are naturally tributary to the commerce of the Missouri. Nearly a dozen rail lines now branch thitherward from North Dakota and eastern Montana. This, however, is but a local phase of her primacy in the general connec- tion. The western termini of all the - Dominion railways are at coast points farther west and nearer the Orient than are those of the American trans- continentals. Thus the traffic to and from the Orient via Canada is forever at advantage over our lines, whether merely east-and-west traffic is con- sidered, or that in connection with the interior mnorth-and-south com- merce, whose trend and magnitude are foreshadowed by the operation of the Panama canal. And competi- tion between these two sets of rail- way systems must advantage all points on the Upper Missouri. The Missouri and the Mississippi _are thus to become tremendous ave- nues of international as well as of in- ternal commerce in a new and ex- panding trade movement which will change the whole system. of North American continental carriage of com- modities north-and-south trend. Lakes to the Gulf Into this grand movement will en- ter the Lakes-to-the-Gulf Deep Wat- erways, connecting the lakes with the Gulf-Atlantic and the Panama canal, and with the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. In this race the Missouri will be a prime factor. But as the battle-line of the com- ing world-trade is the Pacific sea- board, the interior waterway nearest that coastline must become sovereign in trade-dominance. We have seen that that thoroughfare is the Mis- souri, not the Mississippi. And is not the slogan "Missouri River Rate" be- coming relatively more common? Already St. Louis, Kansas City, Atchison, St. Joseph, Omaha and Sioux City mark the mighty growth of Missouri valley commerce. Yank- ton, Chamberlain, Pierre and Mo- bridge in South Dakota, Bismarck, into the destined dominant: THE MARINE REVIEW Mandan, Williston, in' North Dakota, and «Fort . Benton, Great -- Falls, Helena and Butte, in Montana, regis- ter the later developments northerly to the mountains. Again: The rail haul from the up- per Missouri: at. Pierre and at: Bis- marck to Duluth is substantially but half the distance from those points to Chicago; while the water-rate from those two lake points to Cleveland and Buffalo are substantially the same. Here is another advantage to the up- per Missouri valley on east-and-west trafic. And when Hudson bay shall-- as it will--furnish another ocean com- petitor to and from Europe, proxi- mity of the Missouri to Canada gives her another point in the scale of su- premacy. The Panama Canal And the revolutionary effect of the Panama canal on international coast- wise and trans-oceanic trade will bring the entire Mississippi-Missouri valley carrying trade into intense competi- tion with Pacific steamship lines to southern-Orient and beyond, and along great stretches of the coast- lines of both Americas and with At- lantic lines to and from Europe in emptying out to foreign markets our interior productions and bringing' in return cargoes. And when transit developments now. fast advancing toward killing time and reducing cost shall render dump- ing of cargoes from river into ocean- going fleets a thing done in the wink of the eye, and cars are emptied into and filled from them by similar proc- esses, what wheel in all the machin- ery of transportation to and from the ends of the earth will challenge the faculty of the Missouri river, hav- ing such handmaids north and south as are herein indicated? Since the steamer Yellowstone went up from St. Louis to Fort Pierre in 1832, river craft have plied the Missouri all the way to Fort Benton, doing the will of commerce for trade in furs, with the Indians, and answer- ing the call of military posts, and later the demands of pioneer settle- ment and founding of cities and states. When the writer came to Pierre thirty years ago he _ beheld boats coming and going between Omaha and the head of navigation. The Benton Transportation fleet (now of ten boats) has plied from Bis- marck. Several Pierre-owned boats have for years operated here and above to the Yellowstone. At Cham- berlain another line is still actively in commission. 'Are there. sandbars? Yes. stream of importance has not What im- 453 memorially created them? When a boat of the Presidential fleet recently bound to New Orleans to the Deep Waterways convention struck a bar the lower on Mississippi, no one judged the stream non-navigable therefor. Such ideas are ridiculous. Modern improvements coupled with competent pilotage pave the way for faster and cheaper carriage. The fed- eral government is alive to the amaz- ing possibilities at our door in river traffic. The lower Missouri already is under systematic treatment; mod- ern barges and vast dockages re- spond to the impetus. The movement is toward the upper Missouri, soon to be similarly handled. Here destiny, presiding midway between the two oceans, will work the miracle of ages in internal and world-wide commerce. Waterways of New Hampshire By Cok OC. Le Frishee= New Hampshire is one of the su- perlative states of the Union, with one of the greatest mountain ranges, one of the greatest water powers, one _of the finest harbors and some of the grandest scenery, and with some of the most enterprising people in the world. She is the watershed of all New England, and may well be called the mother of water power of that section of the country, since all of her prin- cipal water power rivers rise in New Hampshire. Her only seaport has no counterpart on the Atlantic coast; its only counterpart in the country is Seattle, on the Pacific coast. New Hampshire cannot boast of all the natural resources of the coun- try, but we can boast of what we have been able to do, through the utilization of the brain and energy of her people. Gathering from distant lands, and distant climes, her raw material, we touch' them with the magic wand of energy of trained hand and brain, and they turn out for us a flood of gold, gives us an individual development that has made New Hampshire one of the wonders of the business world. When we consider, how we have built up a business structure, so great and comprehensive, under the present conditions of our transportation sys- tem, we know that when we get cheap transportation from the Atlantic coast canal we will be able to turn the whole state into one large town ex- cept the White mountains, which we *Vice president of the Atlantic Deeper Wa- terway Association and the National Rivers, and Harbors Congress.

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