Forest City press. (Forest City, Potter County, D.T. [S.D.]) 1883-19??, 1906-09-13

are always the crude products. Lower
the cost of transporting cotton. grains.
Wool, hides, ores. coai, cOk and lum-
Der. and the DEVELOPMENT of the COM
molities will innneasurably increase.
With his increase Will come n multi
plication of the factories and mills that
viii Invariably seek the more rapid de
livery by rail for their finished pro-
ducts. Beyond the fact that their traf-
tic rates must be modified by the COM
petitive packet carriers. nothing can
do more To promote railway interests
than the revival of our lauguishing
river trade.
When and how this resueitation shall
he performed depends largely upon the
educational ingenuity and energy of
these river Improvement associations
that are now at work. But the ulti-
mate outcome car not ho Goubted-the
continents great valley Is destined to
come to its own.
During the past four years engineers
have been busily engaged measuring
widths. depths. charting. changing
channels. calculating the resisting force
of shalerocked and soft loan banks
along the upper Mississippi, II they
have found that the judicious cXpendi-
ture of the cost of but three battleships
will wing dam a channel adequate to
accommodate nttNN lltlSlilfS from
st. Paul to New orleans. The very
dams that make this unlocked channel
possible arrest sufficient later to give
milling power to Il hundred manufac-
turing cities each of upward of IA hun
dred thousand people along the way.
The people of the Empire state by direct
vote at the ballot box have appropriated
Slol. goo. coo. or more than five times tina re
quired to channel the upper Mississippi. to
build a ship canal from Lake Erie to the
Hudson. Thus may the cargo loaded at
Chicago or Duluth san undisturbcd to
Hamburg. Havre or Liverpool. The city
of Manchester. England. has spent $780,
cW,WO to get an outlet to the sea. Ger
many. Franc and England are expanding
even larger sums in the construction of
absolutely new cross-country waterways.
And this significant work is being done
abroad in spite of the fact that their rail-
roads are under government control.
Any %canalage of our own rivers. how
ever. must have a worldwide. and not a
local significance. The development OF
river industries must mean something
larger than the quadruplication of keo-
kuk or Lacrosse. Long before the Pan
anna canal is ready to complete this great
drama of we will transmit our
largest cargoes from the heart of the con-
tinent to the Gulf CT Mexico without
breaking buik. When the water OF the
seas meet in that thread OF land. New Or
leans will be the oriental front door to half
of the states of our nation.
The industrial. commercial, and intel
%lectual awakening of the silent continent
has so impressed the empires OF Europe
that they are already terrifying their COM
mercial positions. that they may realize
the full magnitude of these opportunities.
With her customary trade strategy, Eng
land especially is reaching out to the new
L. I,a,,- H..
of way and the Suez canal. Nor do the
open avenues to the east and west en-
brace the full destinies Of a world-inclu-
sive trade. The foundries along the Mo-
nongahela will build the chasm-spanning
bridges that will link "A thousand branches
of yet unmade railroad through the defy
ing. Andes. The wheat from the Sierra
lands of Peru will be threshed by ma
chimes from the shops at Springfield. Ohio;
Auburn, y. V, and Racine, Wis. and we
may again monopolize the trade with Ar
gentina. as we did before the civil war.
Canada and Argentina are ~contendfflg
with each other for the supremacy in the
expectation of wheat to foreign markets,
and the race is as close as the population
battle which Milwaukee and Detlol; have
waged for the past forty years. The no.
minion wheat. when brought to the head
waters of the Mississippi or shipped from
Port Arthur through the Great Lakes and
the Erie canal, will have an advantage
abroad that the gram submitted to the tax
of a ranscontincnta rail haul can not
hope to share.
Thus may the rosuscitation of a river
strengthen the friendship and lessen the
differences between the ncighbor nations.
by serving both with impartial benefits.
Between the broad current of the SAs-
katch"wan and the hcadwaters of the Mis-
siSsippi lies the richest wheat belt in the
world. 1t would cost infinitely less than
the amount congress proposes to eXpend
on Panama to gridiron this great produc-
tive country. both IN Canada and the
states. with Il Mars-like system of navi-
gable inland waterways. binding the Great
Lakes to Hudson bay, and the ~Saskatche-
wan to the Missouri. by which, irrespec-
tive of flag, the treasures of a continent
would find release and the interests of a
homogeneous people receive their due pro
motion.
Governor Deneen of Illinois declares
that the Improvement of the Mississippi.
Missouri and Ohio rivers alone. independ-
ent of any auxiliary canals. has in its
extensive purpose no parallel in the world
Referring to the influence upon railroad
rates, which sucn waterways are destined
to have. Governor Cummins of Iowa said:
when every man who can summon
enough capital To build a boat NAV be
come one Of the common carriers of the
country; when it is full from end to end
and from shore to shore with our com
,nerce. crossing, as it does. every import
ant western railway system, ard cutting
these great arteries thai pass from east
to west. and parallclins those from north
to south. ! believe the solution of traffic
adjustment will be vastly easier than
now
Ex-Governor Van SAINT. of Minnesota.