The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-08-23

rents course have crumbled to decay. and the enterprises which they once Know have taken root on enar-by level lands where traffic runs by rail. Moss covered porticos lean heavily against the receding walls of territorial hotels, and the shelves of retail stores of the glorious forties are empty and broken. And the history which Is written of many a Mississippi tributary is only a little less true of the great river itself.
 And this death of the river has been due chiefly to its friends and not to it's lfoes. Reckless romance suppressed it's trade. Railway transportation soon demonstrated that, though costlier. it
 was obviously faster and safer. And lso, packet after packet went out of commission and no new hulls were Launched to take their place. A few ldilatory lines operate north from New IOrleans; a few boats still ply the Ohio, land in season weekly trip is made
 between St. Louis and St. Paul But the railroad has robbed the river of it's Icommerce, and the mighty waterway, (which for century has been the pride tof the west, is now almost abandoned and has receded into an object of ridi- Icule. Men joke about ''the continental lsewer" and talk of "the river days as Ia thing forever past.
 But there are left those who still love the old river-those who believe in lit, and those who, despite the advent lof the locomotive, still hold with Ma poleon that 6 country is great as it's
 rivers are useful. Nine years ago the commercial interests vested along the
 banks of the Ohio river crystalized in a river improvement association which set itself resolutely to the task of ed-
 ucating congress and the people of the river states to the vast commercial ina- Iportanoe of deepening the channel from Pittsburg to Cairo. They took
 the declaration of Andrew Carnegie
 that the republic now has more than ten thousand miles of connected river and lake navigation, which supplies
 the cheapest inland transportation for
 materials in the world" and added:
 The improvement of the Ohio will make it still cheaper"
 y Isentative citizens called upon the may
 or of Quincy, H., urging some local river Improvements. After protrac-
 ted interview, as to the value of purely local Improvements, the mayor said. Do you know of any attempt having lbeen made on the part of any con- gressnen who represent any of the five | lsippi to influence congress to make an appropriation for river improvement?
 Has any effort been made by the com Imercial organizations, or cities along
 the river, to influence congress to this end?"
 "No," was the answer. But" re- 1 sponded one citizen, quick to see the Opportunity; but it will be done at once.
 This reply was the cornerstone of
 the Upper Mississippi River Improve iment association, which holds it's fourth annual convention in Minneapo- lis this coming October, and which
 will join with the Ohio River Improve ment association and representatives of the lower Mississippi states in hold ling a great valley river improvement convention in, St. Louis this coming November. This convention will de-
 bate the possibilities of and make re- commentators for, the development of a heavy freight channel from the Twin ICities to New Orleans and from the lGreat Falls, Montana, on the upper IlMissouri, to Pittsburg on the Ohio i The value to the whole nation of these Improved waterways. taken in con- Junction with the Improvements now being made on the Illinois river and the Chicago canal, opening ship pas sage from the Great Lakes to the Gulf lcannot be overestimated, If Mir. Car Inegie Is right in his claim that our in- ternal waterways already offered the cheapest transportation in the world, these free arteries of commerce will at Ionce control the traffic rates of the itwenty-two states that they drain These states already produce the bulk lof our agricultural wealth; they al- ready support more than twice as imany manufacturing plants as the other outlying states, and the value of their finished products Is estimated at over ten billion dollars year.
 As the market value of any finished lproduct is estimated upon the produc- lers' price, plus the cost of transporta- tion, the opening of these great water ways to freight traffic kill benefit both the producer through a larger demand flor his goods, and the consumer through a lessened cost for the same. 1 When and hw this resuscitation shall Ibe performed depends largely upon the leducation ingenuity and energy of these river improvement associations that are now at work. Put the ulti- mate outcome cannot be doubted-the Continents Great Valley is destined to Icome to it's own.
 During the past four years engineers ihave been busily engaged measuring lwIdths, depths, charting, changing channels. calculating the resisting force of shale-rocked and soft-loam blanks along the upper Mississippi, and they have fund that the judcious ex- Ipenditure of the cost of but three bat tleships will wing-dam a channel ade- quate to accommodate heavy freight ling from St. Paul to New Orleans IThe very dams that make this un- locked channel possible arrest sutil- cient water to give milling power to Ihunrded manufacturing cities each of upward of a hundred thousand people along the way.-Richard Lloyd Jones lin Golfers.
 HOW TO FLOAT AND SWIM.