The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1902-07-24

JLl ", lJUS.
When the western terminus of the
Great Northern reached Puget sound
he saw American enterprise looking
supinely on from its vantage ground
on the Pacific seaboard, while the vast
trade of Oriental Asia was in the al
most exclusive grasp of the merchants
and shipmasters of Great Britain and
other European countries. The few
American steamships plying between
our Pacific seaboard cities and China
and Japan were not adequate in carry
ing capacity or in the volume of their
cargoes to successfully compete with
the merchant fleets of England, Japan
and other powers. Mr.. Hill sent his
agents to explore this field for the ex-
tension of American commerce, and
discovered the opportunity for an i'm
mense development of American trade
with Asiatic seaports by proper or
ganization of transportation facilities
by land and by sea so as to increase
the volume of tonnage and reduce the
cost of transportation. He proceeded
to build for this trade ships of the
largest cargo capacity ever set ahoat,
and to make arrangements to fill them
with freight by an extensive combina-
tion of railroad lines reaching to all
the needed sources of supply. These
are his sea monsters of the Pacific
ocean, to fill the belly of one of which
will require thousand full carloads of
freight. It is believed that Mr.. Hill
has thus successfully marked out the
path through which American enter
prise will soon achieve the mastery of
the commerce of the Pacific ocean.
The recent acquisition of the Bur-
lington system by the Great Northern
and Northern Pacific was an essential
part of this scheme for making this
northern route across the continent
and the western ocean the great high
way of the commerce of the world. One
arm of the Burlington reaches down
to St. Louis, at which point Mr.. Hill
expects to gather the cotton sent up by
rail or river from the South, to be car
1ied by the northern lines to Seattle,
and thence by ship to China. Here
also he saw something new in the
water which flows in mighty volume
southwark to the sea. What he saw
was the possibility of so deepening the
channel of the Mississippi that ocean
ships might carry their cargoes with
out breaking bulk from Liverpool or
.lHEamburg to ST. Louis, and thus of
making st. Louis seaport. In this
deeper channel he saw even a more
useful purpose in affording an uninter-
rupted channel for fleets of great barges
carrying the grain and produce of the
central states of the Mississippi valley
to New Orleans and bringing back the
cotton and other products of the South
here again applying the principle of
concentrating the greatest amount of
tonnage to the unit of effective motive
power. His calculation is that by this
means the cost of river transportation
from New Orleans to St. Louis will be
so reduced that the grain of the CEN
trail West and the cotton of the South
will take this cheaper channel and
thus pay tribute to the northern trans
continental railroads. This scheme of
deepening the channel of the Missis-
sippi is not, of course, original with
Mr.. Hill, but he has given a St. Louis
project of long standing an amplitude
of scope and defnitiveness of purpose
and detail which have stamped it with
his characteristics and given it claim
to confidence in its feasibility and COM
mercial value which it did not possess
before.
The inland seas of the North are al
ready teeming with the progeny of the
sea serpents he planted there. The
waters of the Pacific will soon be
stirred by the mighty fins of the ma
rine monsters he is preparing to put
there, and it may not be many years
before the deepened\ waters of the
lower Mississippi will be thronged
with fleets of great ships, the prodigies
of the dreams of a man all whose
dreams of commercial development are
cold business calculations. Pioneer
Press.
Milaca-Willmar Train Service.
1t is reported that an important
change of time will be made in Great
Northern trains Sunday week. While
details are difficult of obtaining, it is