The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1902-01-19

report will be found in House Document
No. $50, of the End Session OF the last
Congress.
BY misunderstanding on the part of
those having charge of the promotion Oh
this Improvement, the statistics neces-
sary to prove commercial case Tor
it were not supplied to Captain Lucas
in time for his regular report, which is
required to be started on it way to the
Secretary of War by the goth of Novem-
ber His report upon this subject, there
fore, did not come to your committee
from the Secretary of War until after
your bill had practically been drawn;
and the item for the carrying out of
Captain LucaS's recommendation was for
this reason--I trust ! am right in saying
for this reason only-not included in the
bill reported by you. 1t was added in the
Senate, and an appropriation of $25O,000
voted to begin the work, which sum was
re duced to S150,000 in the Conference
Committee of the two Houses; and, with
the item in this form, the bill was pass
ed by the House.
We now ask that you retain this item
in the new bill which you are about to
report.
North Carolina was onced called "a
strip of land between two States" AS
the State was the third in population at
the LIST Census, and as it has record
of which any one may be proud, being
inferior to that of none of the original
thirteen which achieved our independ-
ence, | assume that the gibe had refer
ence to our commercial attainments-
which have been inferior to those of our
neighbors. This inferiority was palpa
bly, the result of our want of large sea-
ports; but the reason for this deficiency,
which has been the theme of unnumber
ed discussions, was obscured by the over
working of the railroad idea, under which
railroads we're held to be "annihilators
of space" Recently, the conception of
the unit of transportation value as 'per
ten per mile has revealed the real
reason to students of our geography.
If you will be good enough TO look at
the map which submit land which /
have marked Exhibit No. p, you will
observe that the coast line of North
Carolina juts out far beyond the general
coast line-namely, the line running from
New York, where the first great recess
sion takes place at the North, to Sa
vannah, where the last recession cul-
inmates at the South. The effect of this
popularity is to place our seaports at
such a great distance from the back
country that the ports Of our neighbors,
Richmond on the North and Charleston
on the South, are nearer to much of it
than they. The normal seaport is on a
line with its rivals. The ideal seaport is
on line (between it's rivals) that pre-
sents salient angle to landward and
the re entrant angle to seward. With
US, our jutting seaooast causes those
angles to be reversed in the case OF
lines drawn from any of our seaports to
Richmond on the one side and Charles
ton on the other. Now, the traffic in
fuence of any port, under the rule Of
equal charges per ton per mile, reaches
half way to the next port. II, therefore,
VIC should delimit the territory traffi-
cally tributary to the ports under consid-
GRAFTON, by drawing lines at right angles
across the halfway points of air lines
between them, we would find that these
right-angle lines converge until they
meet within the territory of our own
State, instead of remaining parallel, as
they would do in the case of the normal
port, or diverging as in the case Of the
ideal port. The result of these physical
conditions is such that il, instead of the
commerce-repelling Hatteras, the East
best harbor in the world and four