Los Angeles herald., 1910-02-15
RAILROADS TRY
TO KILL CANALS,
SAYS BOB EVANS
NAVAL HERO MAKES DIRECT
ACCUSATION
REAR ADMIRAL EXPLAINS RATE
MAKING METHODS
If Given Chance Waterway Will Earn
Returns, as Freight Can Be
Shipped Cheaper and
Faster
Especial to The Herald. ]


NEW YORK, Feb. 14-Rear Admiral
Robley D. Evans, who has been ex-
planning the probable future of the
Panama canal in a striking series of
articles in Hampton's Magazine, con-
cludes in the forthcoming March num-
ber with a direct attack upon the rail-
roads and their rate-making methods,
which is perhaps the most lucid ex-
PLANTATION of the whole situation yet
seen in print.
"There is no more important ques
tion before the American nation to-
day" he says, than this of making
very sure that when they have invest
ed their hundreds of millions of dol
lars in the canal it shall be permitted
to give them returns on the invest
ment.
"ITbe Panama canal will earn the
returns, albeit perhaps indirectly, II 1t
is given the chance. But it will not be
given the chance If the transcontinen-
tai railroads can prevent.
Decade after decade, the great east
and-west railroad systems opposed and
prevented the building of the canal.
They knew what its competition would
mean in the reduction of their freight
rates.
1.-THE canal, however, is being dug.
Not because the public rose to an acute
realization of the commercial necesst-
ty for it, but because of the Oregon
trip from the Pacific to the Atlantic.
That one voyage of one battleship. in
a time of national crisis, served to
crystallize a purpose in the national
mind that all the powers of railroad
finance and railroad politics could not
thwart.
To-day we take a certain pride in
the fact that American genius and en-
terprise are achieving the most Won
derful engineering work ever under
taken by man. But we are giving no
thought, much less taking any steps,
to assure to ourselves as a nation the
commercial benefits which that work
must bring If it shall not be disap-
pointment and a failure.
Railroads Hostile to Canal
"Do not imagine that I have become
afflicted with any Populistic anti-rail-
road mania. There is not a transporta-
tion authority among all the rulers of
the rail who will claim more for the
steam railroad as factor in the devel-
opment of the country, past, present
or future, than 1 will concede. But
the truth will not be suppressed. The
railroads always have been hostile to
the canal, and they may be hostile to
IT in the future. I believe their hos
tility is based on narrow conception,
a short-sighted view. But. reasonable
or unreasonable, it is the fact.
1--WE are spending $400, 900 digging
at a canal which ought to reduce
freight rates across our continent to a
fraction of what they are now. The
commercial justification of that ex-
penditure will never be found, as I have
heretofore tried to sow, in the i'm
petus that will be given our foreign
trade. 1t must be found in benefit to
our domestic commerce.
Water transportation is the cheap
est known to the world. Wherever
there is free and fair competition the
water highway takes the business from
the railroad. Year after year a larger
and larger proportion of London's coal
comes down fom the north of England
by the sea. Year after year the I'M
portance of the internal water routes
rivers and canals-on the continent OF
Europe increases, as they carry a
steadily increasing proportion of the
freight traffic. Why? Because it is
more economical to move trafhc oy
water than by land.
"Yet for many years we have con-
sented that the railroads should mo-
nopolize the tranScontinental tratt1c,
which a canal would have carried at
greater speed and vastly less cost. We
have developed our continent thus far
without thought of the possibilities of
route-that via the Atlantic, the canal
and the Pacifc-and without consider
alton of the possibilities of our impe-
rial system of rivers.
"The canal is going to force atten-
tion to these things, If only the coun-
try can be aroused to understand 1ts
immense potentialities. But how many
people who read this know that it will
be possible to ship the oranges of
Southern California from Los Angeles
to New York or Boston in fewer days
by steamship through the Panama ca
nal, when completed, than by fast
freight across the country?
"The distance from New York to
Los Angeles via the Panama canal is,
in round numbers, 5000 miles. A 6000-
ton capacity steamer loaded with or
anges or other fresh fruit Steaming at
a rate of only twelve knots per hour,
would cover this distance in eighteen
days. If we allow on9 day for the
steamer passing through the canal her
total time from port to port would be
nineteen days. If the vessel were run
specially for the fruit trade this time
could be reduced by several days. A
ship of sixteen knots speed, such as
those now used in the West India
fruit trade, would make the trip in
just fourteen days, giving again the
allowance of one day for passing
through the cdudl.
1.-THE time for rail freights across the
continent varies from twenty to sixty
days. 1t will therefore be seen that
the steamer could in all cases land
her freight in a shorter time. This
means that many kinds of freight
would be delivered in better condi-
tion and for one-third the price now
charged by the railroads"
Admiral Evans then goes into de-
tail. quoting specific freight rates from
the Pacific coast to prove his conten-
tions. and then attacks the railroads
vigorously for their policy of choking
off competition by water. Here is
sample, he says, of how the choking
off process is accomplished:
'fThe Panama railroad once built
steamers, how many do not recall, to
run in connection with the road across
the isthmus of Panama. These steam
ers were to carry freight from New Or
leans to Colon. When they were
started railroad rates across the con-
tinent were cut down to such a figure
that the steamers could not be oper-
ated. Merchants we're short-sighted
enough to accept the low rates and as
n result the ships went to the scrap
heap or were sold for service in other
waters And the railroad rates went
back to where they were before the
steamship line was projected"
This sort of action, he maintains, re-
stricts the true development OF the
country. The railroads. anyhow, have
practically all the business they can