Butler citizen. [volume] (Butler, Pa.) 1877-1922, 1880-12-01
RIVER COMMERCE OF PITTS
BURGH.

Aside from her great industries,
Pittsburgh, a. the leader of navigation
on the Ohio, claims attention, and ex-
tends her influence along the Is 900
miles of navigable streams attainable by
her river steamers This influence she
retains in spite of the rapid growth of
that great destroyer of river trade, the
railway. On either side of the three
valleys that radiate from Pittsburgh
are found the omnipresent parallel lines
of rails, six arms of great cuttle-fish
whose body is the smoky city, and
houses that draw the life from the trade
oi each stream. On the Allegheny
this trade has long since disappeared
entirely; the Monongahela bears upon
its slack-watered current a line of fine
boats that have existed since the earli-
est days of steam navigation, but
whose business begins to feel railway
encroachment. The Ohio is piled by
a line of Cincinnati and Pittsburgh
packets, and by smaller craft earning a
precarious existence between way"
points, but the glory of the river is de-
parted.
And yet, at favorable stages of wa
ter in the tickle OAio, the levee at
Pittsburgh shows most animated scenes.
A stranger reaching the city during a
stage of water favorable for boating
say four to eight feet of water in the
channel-would be treated to most
interesting sight on the Monongahela
Wharf, between that manv-piered aud
venerable structure the Monongahela
Suspension Bridge and the Point"
This scene is especially characteristic
when witnessed from the upper or
hurricane" deck of some big l000-ton
steamer The observer is reminded of
nothing so much as of freshly dis
turbed ant-hill This smile is borne
out by the action of the double stream
of big black "rousters," a. e., colored
boat hands. As these pass in opposite
directions over the gang-pank, each
biped ant bears, not milk-white egg,
but fat sack of bran as to the out
vi h IVA WI Sidso vi Ddl VI stCt1t
as to the incoming procession. This
double process goes ON until the great
hull has exchanged its St Lolis freight
for Pittsburgh's products. And so
skillfully is this same hull ia hioned
and adapted to the precarious channels
of western rivers, that, with thousand
tons of freight aboard, Pittsburgh
and St Louis passenger and freight
boat will scarcely draw" four and a
half feet of water And in this way,
during the first three months of 1880.
10000 tons per month of the varied
products of Pittsburgh's fery-hearted
furnaces were waited by steam and
current 3, 500 miles toward the setting
SUM- Kindly showers thus washed
away 10000 tons of freight from the
railroads
But the magic wand which most po-
tently transforms the river-front of
Pittsburgh, which brings intense ener-
gy out of apathy, which turns day to
night and silence into a Babel of
sounds, is the sudden advent of ''coal
boat" stage Of water. .. e., anything
over eight feet. This occurs when both
rivers. swelled by rapid thaw or con-
tinued rains, send down their quicken
ed tides, so that both freshets reach
the Ohio at the same time About the
mouth of the Monongahela, or safely
moored in its slack-water ''pools," float
hundreds of great clumsy craft that
have the draught of small ocean
steamer. These are laden deep with
millions of bushels of the wonderful BIZ
luminous coal and matchless coke of
Western Pennsylvania. The coal, in
glistening, irregular cubes, is fresh
from hundred collieries up the beau
tlful Monongahela Valley, and the coke
in huge barges that hold $4,000 BUSH
els each, is the output of the adjacent
regions, where 5, 900 coke ovens black
en- the fair land and sky with their
dense smoke. In 1879 62,000,000
bushels of coal and 3.500,00 bushe s
of coke passed through the locks of the
Monongahela, dependent for its going
upon the caprice of Jupiter Pluvius.
These awkward-looking boats, with
their load of carbon, may have lain
thus for months, while the price of
their cargoes has doubled in the far-off
maj kets for which they were loaded,
and their owners are moFed to profani-
ty, or pray for rain to float off their
waiting cargoes.
Pittsburgh is the home of 130 tow
boats of pattern incomprehensible to
eastern eyes, for they do not "tow,"
but push Their LONELINESS is out
weighed by their bulldog tenacity of
purpose, when it comes to their legitl-
mate business of barbor and long trip
towing of cumbersome fleets of coal-la-
den craft. These are lashed in solid
feet, of which the steamer is the hind
most hull. In cost these craft range
from the perfectly appointed monster
a fortune of $4,000 and
the power of 100 horses, down to the
battered veteran that might bring 81
900. This motley feet is huddled in
port, each boat ready and anxious to
move these coal craft over the hum
dreds or thousands of miles of tortuous
Ohio or muddy Mississippi. Their
fires are laid and their boilers are filed,
and when the coal-boat stage comes at
last it finds Pittsburgh boats and their
crews galvanized into intense action.
1t may be that this long expected
rise is an affair Of single day, or of
forty-eight hours duration at best. The
rivers of Pittsburgh rise and fall like a
iack-in-the-box There may be three
feet of waite on Saturday, thirteen on
Sunday, and Mondays sunset will red
den "six feet scant" in the channel.
Between these extremes is the tide
which, taken at the food, leads the
coal fleet to the southern and western
markets, and brings long-deferred cash
to the shippers. The amount of sys-