The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-07-15
IMPORTANCE OF
 TRANSPORTATION Trade Relations Are Guided By
 Railroad Facilities RIVERS MAKE RATES LOW Railway Systems of United States Are Inadequate to Handle Traf- fic, Hence Necessity for
 Great Improvements.
RIVERS MAKE RATES LOW

Washington, July H--(speeiaf)-In his comprehensive address delivered before the National Association of Manufacturers of the United States, at Washington, Sec retary Root said Transportation sums up the trade relations of the United States with the entire world" It was the statement of a self-evident proposi- ton and applicable no less, but even more, to the inland trade and commerce of the country than to the foreign trade and commerce. The facilities of the great railroad systems of the country are frank ly admitted by their officials to be wholly inadequate to the demands made upon them by the merchants and the man. ufacturers of the United States and with equal frankness they concede that the problem of transportation must find it's solution in the adequate improvement of the Inland waterways and the harbors Of the country. The necessity for the i'm provement of the highways of trade and commerce furnished by nature and too long neglected is not found only in the fact that they would furnish continuous means of transportation to the great in- land markets of the country and to the harbors for the export trade, but it is also found in the inevitable fact that they would carry the raw material and the finished product at rates vastly less than the railway rates, in competition with the railways though not in antagonism to them
 That transportation sums up trade re- lations between the states-the interstate commerce of the country-in a vastly greatly degree represented by figures enormously larger than it sums up the ai,.t; ,F Tnff faH tafn h the entire world the bulletin issued from the department of commerce and labor, The Statistical Record of the Progress of the United States" amply and most con clusively demonstrates. For the year 1906 the value of exports from the United States was $1743, ,S64 800 and the value of imports was $l,226, ,563, ,S43-a most gratify- ing to tai of g, ,97O, ,42S, ,343. But In the same year the total value of the farm pro- ducts alone was $3,675, ,3S9, ,442; the value of the Iron and steel products was $941,- 071,093; the value of wool manufactures was $3S0, ,934, ,003; the value of manufactures of cotton was s4i2. 45l 21S the value of silk products was s1SS,2SS, 072. Tn other words while the total foreign commerce of the United States in 1906 was of the value of g, gro, ,42S, ,343, the value of five articles of inland commerce was In the enormous to- tai of S5,573, ,133S2S. exceeding the value of the foreign commerce by $2, 6O2, 705, 4S5, or within fraction of the value of the exports and imports
 It needs no argument to demonstrate that the question of transportation sums up the inland trade relations of the United States, nor does 1t need more than the facts of transportation. apparent to every section of the country and supple mented by the frank admissions of rail- way officials, to demonstrate conclusively that In the adequate improvement of the rivers and harbors of the country the true and the permanent solution of the problem is to be found.