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10 THE MARINE RECORD. AUGUST 9, I900. ESTABLISHED 1878. Published Every Thursday by THE MARINE RECORD PUBLISHING CO., Incorporated. C. E. RUSKIN, - - - - Manager. CAPT. JOHN SWAINSON, - - - Editor. CLEVELAND, CHICAGO, Western Reserve Building. Royal Insurance Building. SUBSCRIPTION. One Copy, one year, postage paid, - - $2.00 One Copy, one year, to foreign countries, - = $3.00 Invariably in advance. > ADVERTISING. Rates given on application. All communications should be addressed to the Cleveland office, THE MARINE RECORD PUBLISHING CO., Western Reserve Building, Cleveland, O. Entered at Cleveland Postoffice as second-class mail matter. No attention is paid to anonymous communications, but the wishes of contributors as to the use of their names will be scrupulously regarded. CLEVELAND, O., AUGUST 9, 1900. aa Att lake ports are bent on honoring the Congressional committee now touring the lakes. To mention the partic- ular circumstances occuring at each port would be to con- sume the entire issue of the RECORD, we must therefore con- tent ourselves and readers by stating as above. SOT OOOO CommeErRcIAL Agent Johnson, of Stanbridge, under date of June 9, 1900, reports that the Canadian government has adopted similar regulations to those of the United States, requiring triplicate invoices, one to be filed at the port of entry, one with the shipper, and the remaining one to be for- warded to the department of customs at Ottawa. Oe Oe FOURTEEN out of the seventeen members of the House Committee on Rivers and Harbors and one member of the Senate Committee on Commerce represent the Congress of the United States on the tour of inspections of the harbors on the Great Lakes. Onno previous trip has there been such a large representation of the House committee. OO Olle The standing of Milwaukee in the United States marine hospital service has been changed from third to second class. Dr. J. M. Allen, who has been the contract surgeon at that port for the past thirty-one years, has been relieved by Dr. Herbert Blue, a past assistant surgeon of the navy. Dr. Blue took charge of his work this week, having been detailed from Genoa, Italy. While hitherto sailors have been sent from Mil waukee to Chicago whenever possible, it is now ex- pected that the cases will be treated at Milwaukee without a transfer being made. ooo or or At a recent gathering in Boston one of the speakers made the following impressive statement: ‘‘The country received from its predecessors the horse; we bequeath the bicycle, the locomotive and the automobile. We received the goose ‘quill, and bequeathed the typewriter; we received the scythe, we bequeath the mowing machine, wereceived the sickle, we bequeath the harvester; we received the hand- printing press, we bequeath the Hoe chlinder press; we re- ceived Johnson’s Dictionary, we bequeath the Century Dic- tionary; we received gunpowder, we bequeath nitroglyer- ine; we received the tallow dip, we bequeath the arc light; we received the galvanic battery, we bequeath the dynamo we received the flint lock, we bequeath automatic firing Maxim guns; we received the sailing ship, we bequeath the “steamship, the greyhound of the sea; we received the frigate Constitution, we bequeath the battleship Oregon, we re- ceived the beacon signal fire, we bequeath the telephone and wireless telegraphy; we received wood and stone for struct- ures, we bequeath twenty-storied sky-scrapers of steel. Such are a few of the bequests of the nineteenth century to the twentieth.’’ POLICING THE CANADIAN CANALS. So much alarm has been created in Canada by the several attempts to wreck a part of the Welland Canal thatit is under- stood the Ottawa authorities have retained the services of detectives in several parts of the United States to keep them thoroughly informed as to the movements of suspected con- spirators. Though a few men of the Dominion police have been keeping a quiet watch on all the canals ever since the Welland canal outrage, the force of the Cornwall canal was suddenly increased the early part of the week, and a night and day watch was maintained. Report has it that this action is due to information received from the United States to the effect that anattempt will be made to blow up the Cornwall canal in revenge for the punishment of the men who tried to wreck the Welland canal. The Cornwall canal is eleven miles long, and any serious damage to it would be a great loss to the country, interrupt- ing navigation from the lake to the sea board. Cornwall is situated very near the American frontier, and it will be re- membered that it was threatened with invasion at the time of the Fenian raid. The Dominion authorities deny that there isany Fenian scare in connection with the present policing of the canal, but they are very reticent about the precautions taken and the movements of the police, who are under the direction of Col. Sherwood, chief of the Dominion police force. They simply assert that it would be unwise to take the public into their confidence in the matter. So THE ST. CLAIR CANAL. “Congress having, in the act of June 6 last, called for plans and estimates for doubling the commercial capacity of the St. Clair flats ship canal, a full special report in the matter will be prepared and submitted as soon as praticable,”’ says Col. G. J. Lydecker, Corps of Engineers, U. S. A., in his an- nual report to the Secretary of War, submitted through the Chief of Enginers. ‘‘Thelast appropriation for the improve- ment of the canal was made in 1890, and a balance of $3,059 is still available and will be used for repairing and extending the protecting pile work at the ends of canal dikes.” Col. Lydecker says {hat operations were under the ship channel appropriation in the summer and fall of 1899, and it was not deemed judicious to place an additional plant in that locality until these operations were completed, as it would tend to obstruct and endanger the large commerce passing through the narrow and crooked channels. For that reason action in relation to the commencing of work under the continuing contract system, as provided in the river and harbor act of 1899, was postponed until last spring. The bids were opened for construction of a 21 foot channel, and contracts have been awarded for work on the Lime Kiln Crossing section. Ballard’s Reef channel section and for time work by dredges at other parts of the river channel, where excavation is needed to obtain the same low water depth. Work on the ship channel from Duluth to Buffalo was confined principally to the completing of channels through Round Island shoals in the upper St. Mary’s, and a channel in lower Detroit river along the Grosse Isle lower range. The depth now available over the shoalest part of the ship channel is 18% feet, confined to that section of the Detroit river between the Lime Kiln Crossing and the south end of Bois Blanc Island. The principal work in St. Mary’s river was the construc- tion of an extension of the crib pierin the northeast approach to Poe’s lock and intended to providea much-needed berth- ing place for vessels approaching the lock. In Hay Lake channel the work included a completion of the deepening of the Middle Neebish section, and of reinforcing the dyke ad- joining that channel. This has given a 21 foot channel from the angle at the foot of Hay Lake to Lake Huron. Dredging inthe Cheboygan harbor has resulted in an 18 foot channel 200 feet wide in the Straits of Mackinac, which enables vessels to load three feet deeper than a year ago. Dredging at Alpena harbor resulted in obtaining a 16 foot channel, an increase of three feet. Saginaw river now has a 16 foot channel through the bar at its mouth for about two-thirds of distance between curves of like depth in the bay and river. oO SAMPLES of Japanese coal have been tested by the War Department at Washington, and it is announced that the tests havedemonstrated that this coal compares favorably with the product of American mines. Japan being so Manila, it is probable that the siebierrnalar's Meusancut in China and the Philippines will find it cheaper to use Jap- anese coal, than to import American so many thousand miles across the Pacific ocean.—The Black Diamond. CHICAGO RIVER. Colonel Robert Rae, admiralty lawyer and noted authori- ty on marine matters says: “The increased purity of Chicago river water since the drainage board accomplished its great work makes dock prop- erty more desirable than ever for manufacturing sites. “Moreover, if the river should be widened to 200 feet and deepened to modern harbor requirements it would still be in- adequate to the harbor needs of Chicago. Imagine for in- _stance that the utmost improvement contemplated has been accomplished, at whatever stupendous cost it may come to, and the river was 200 feet wide, cleared of every possible ob- struction and deepened to modern requirements. ‘Now suppose this resulted in the prosperity to it neces- sary {o make such an immense expenditure profitable and we have it crowded with shipping, it would still be too nar- row and cramped for room. “The modern ship must be 500 feet and more in length, coal and grain boats, for instance, must have room for five hatches in order to load and unload expeditiously. Other- wise they cannot compete with railroads in the cost of cargo handling. ‘‘A modern harbor should accommodate four such boats abreast so that one may be moored at each side of the river and have room between them for the others to pass. “The smaller boat trade will last no longer than until the existent small boats give out. No more of them will be built. ‘‘All this is so apparent that we no longer make any pre- tense of ability to hold our lumber trade, and our coal trade is fast drifting away from Chicago’s narrow and too shallow river harbor.”’ Another authority on the subject says that in this day of condensing engines the great value of a location near water, makes Chicago dock property especially valuabJe for elec- trical plants, power houses, etc., for whether the water be clean or foul they need it and can use it for condensing. The Metropolitan Elevated Railway Co. located their power plant about a mile from the river and then spent a | million of dollars running a tunnel to it under their right of way. The Union Loop Co., and the Edison Electric Co., made a great saving by locating their power plant directly on the bank of the river. While its increased cleanliness has made the vicinity of the Chicago river more healthful, more attractive and more desirable in every way to large users of steam, and to manufacturing plants requiring larger area that can now be had in the subdivided sections of the city, it seems thatthe property along the river, now used mostly for docks, is ultimately destined to be used principal- ly, if not entirely, for manufacturing purposes. This seems apparent whether the river be kept clean or not; whether it be widened, cleared and deepened for harbor purposes; or whether harbor. dilemma be taken at once by the horns, asit shou'd be, and as eventually it will beif ever a satisfactory result is attained. That can only be with fixed bridges, the river closed to all transportation, except by lighters, and all loading and unloading relegated to Chicago’s outer harbor. “Tt seems to me that this is not only, by long odds, vastly the best settlement of the vexed question for the convenience of the resident public of Chicago, but, also, radical as it may seem, it is the very best arraugement, in the immediate pres- ent and in the future, for Chicago’s great lake marine in- terests.”’ oe THE question of the coal supply is still much discussed in England. In an address before the Victoria Institute, Prof. Edward Hill considered it in a new andimportant way. He said that the real question of the duration of the supply does not refer to the exhaustion of the coal fields, as there may be inexhaustible veins ata great depth. But the pratical ex- haustion may be reahed when, owing to increased depth and expense of mining, to actual diminution of supply and other causes, the cost of coal will tend to become prohibi- tive, and English manufacturing industries will be heavily weighted as compared with other countries, such as Amer- ica, where coal is more abundant and of easy access. Since the last inquiry made by a royal commission thirty years ago, the output of British coal has doubled. Professor Hill favors an export duty, pointing out that last year about 40,- 000,000 tons, or one fifth of the British coal production, was exported, and he advocates a duty of five shilllngs, $1.20 a ton. English statesmen and economists realize that it is only the question of a few generations when the matter of the coal supply willbe vital. It is stated another royal commission is to be appointed. Fr ete, Gl et es