Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1907-01-02
TIE VALUE IF
 GOOD WATERWAYS John A. Fox, Who Will Talk to Business Men Tonight, Talks Interestingly on the Subject.
KAVANAUGH COMING
Little Rock Former Judge Also to Be Hert-S0me Statistics That Are Con,incing-Mass Meeting To. night

of the Board of Directors of the Nd tionai River ana Harbor Congress, who is in the cltT to interest Pipe ,;.uff u.siness .s, ii, wate way i'm Iprovements, will allress the mass meeting tonight at the city hall, the meeting having been called by President W. \. T'atoca, of sHe l4ae Buf Board of Jrala.
 1 It is also eXpectel that Judge N l M Kavanaugh. Of Little Rock, who is l interested in the movement, will also | be heard at the gatherins
 In further discussing the needs of Arkansas and the country generally in the way of waterway improvements,
 Mr. Fox this morning said:
 ="Therc is no question before the
 American people today of such
 vital importance as this question of
 easy water transportation. Fh'ra
 is no section of the earth so gen enously favored by natural wa CT
 ways, nor ha4 any section of the
 world more favored sea coa&t for ] commercial development, and yet in
 our wonderful march of proe css
 We have simply taken adVantl@e of
 the streams and harhors as we
 roAid the5.. AS our deNelopMont
 becomes more complete, however,
 We learn to realize rhe importance l of these natural advantages and be-
 gin to look te their improvement
 Since the history of our goY. ! ornment began, we have expended but S46S, ,o00 900 on all of our
 harbors and internal waterways;
 and of the latter alone there are more than t5,00o miles. France and Germany, CT the other hand, i being older countries and having ] made use of railway facilities to their fullest extent, have come to realize that water transportation is indispensable and they have eX pended $1,4O0,00O, ,00O and S1 .200.- GOO 900 respectively in constructing artificial waterways and improving the natural ones. And yet, in area, ncii her one of these countries is as large as the state of Texas. Of the $46S 100000 expended by us, about $7O 100000 has been used in inn proving the great lakes. so that ships drawing 21 feet of water may pass with safety from one port to another. A great part of this amo->t was expended in construct ing the connecting links between lakes Superior and Huron and be- tween lakes Huron and Erie so that grain and iron from the West | might be interchanged with coal and manufactured products from the East. Of so great benefit has this expenditure proven that the ] commerce on the great lakes, as l measured at the Soo locks has
 grown from 5000 tons in 1858 to 41,270,0OO tons in 1905, and carry ing charges have been reduced dur ing the past 20 years from 2.99
 mills per ton per mile to .S5 of one
 mill per ton per mile. If it was a saving of an even ? mills per ton
 per mile on the traffic of 1905, it
 amounted to $6S,50S,200, or pays for itself every year. Now this same argument is true of every large highway of commerce in the United States.
 "It is estimated that $220, ,000,- 900 would permanently improve the Missouri, the Mississippi and the l Ohio rivers, and if this improve 1 ment resulted in saving only one l mill per ton per mile on the low | class bulk freight produced in the states adjacent to those streams, the amount saved annually, based l on the output of the year 1905,