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January, 1925 grain from a hundred million bushels to nearly four hundred million, while lum- ber has diminished from a billion feet to about two hundred million. To compare the amount of freight traffic on the Great Lakes with that of various ports and waterways, Fig. 2 has been prepared. Wherever the data were available, the traffic is shown in net tons oi cargo for the year 1923. . In some cases an earlier year was taken and in others it was necessary to use the registered tonnage of the vessels con- cerned in connection with the record of arrivals and clearances. It will be seen from the diagram that the Great Lakes traffic exceeds the for- eign commerce of all the Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific coast harbors; it is 40 per cent greater than the commerce of MARINE REVIEW water for the use of naviga- tion. The creation of a new waterway or the improvement of an existing one may be justified by the character and volume of traffic, by the lower cost of trans- port, by the economic advantage result- ing from the development of a locality not so easily reached and served by oth- er means of transportation; or perchance justification may be found in the con- trol of rates to be charged by other car- niers. In evaluating each of these bene- fits, however, the capital charges and ex- pense of maintenance of the waterway must be included in the cost of trans- portation. | courses Preparatory to the adoption of a proj- ect for the improvement of a river or harbor by the federal government, the 3 tent that the river and harbor act became popularly known as a “log rolling” pro- position, or a “pork barrel” Dill. At certain times, efforts to have im- proved streams given more ample depth and width, and to extend the work to in- clude other streams not yet improved, are particularly active, and, because of the recent overtaxing of the railroad system, we are now in one of those _ periods. At such a time the optimistic prophecies of benefits which are put forth by the ardent advocates of almost indiscriminate waterway improvements may be as un- worthy of acceptance as the opinion of those who cry “pork barrel” ‘whenever a law for the improvement of rivers and harbors is under consideration. It is unquestionable that expenditures are sometimes made on projects where FIG. 4—TWO LARGE AND TWO SMALL LOCKS AT THE SOO HANDLE MUCH OF THE TRAFFIC ON THE GREAT LAKES, A TRADE WHICH IS ANNUALLY TWICE AS LARGE AS THE COMBINED MOVEMENT THROUGH THE PANAMA AND SUEZ CANALS 297 rivers and canals of the United States, three and a half times the Pana- ma, and more than four times the Suez canal traffic. The control of navigable waters in the United States is vested in the federal government, and the administration of laws concerning them rests specifically in the war department. Of the twenty- six thousand miles of navigable streams within our territorial limits, a length of some six thousand miles has a navigable depth of six feet or more. The re- mainder is available only for very light draft, or for floating logs. The main flow of traffic in the United States is evidently east and west, and our larger railroad systems have been built to accommodate this traffic. Our largest river arteries flow generally north and south, and this has militated against their greatest usefulness. Re- cently the proportion of north and south traffic has been increasing, and if this tendency continues it will serve to en- hance the availability of our natural congress is supposed first to order an “examination and survey,’ to be made by the corps of engineers under the sec- retary of war. This results in a report by an officer or board of officers, or both, giving an opinion as to the extent of improvement, if any, that is con- sidered worthy of undertaking and an approximate estimate of the cost- Thus in theory, the project is supposed to be passed upon by engineer officers expert in waterway development by reason of their training and experience. Unfor- tunately congress, before making an appropriation, does not always await this report, nor always follow the advice of the engineer department when received. These appropriations are made by what is known as the river and harbor act, and it was formerly the practice to stip- ulate in detail the several projects and the amount appropriated for each. On account of the local interest of the con- gressmen, stimulated by some of their constituents, this resulted in the past in practices of vote trading to such an ex- but little commerce is ever developed. This is illustrated by the case of the Ouachita and Black rivers, where a reach — of 440 miles of channel is under im- provement in Arkansas and Louisiana. In 1900, a statistician employed by the Ouachita-Black River Improvement as- sociation predicted an annual saving of over three million dollars to result from improvement of the river. In 1902, con- gress adopted a project to provide 6% foot depth, at an estimated cost of about two million dollars. At present, after a total expenditure of some six million dollars, about half the length of the river is available for through commerce at the depth proposed. The present traffic is tons per year, 80 per cent of which is saw logs and timber products, carried only a short distance, with a freight rate reported to be 3 cents per ton-mile. Clearly if the annual saving of three million dollars anticipated by the op- timistic statistician is realized, it must result from control of rates on a rail about 120,000