The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1910-02-19
RAILROADS WILL
 TRY TO KILL CANAL
Says Fighting Bob'' Evans in Forcible Article on Flu ture Freight Rates by Land and Sea.

Rear Admiral Robley D. Evans, who Fhas been explaining the probable fu- ture of the Panama Canal in a strik- ing series of articles in Hampton s Magazine. oo E-uues in the forthcom- ing March number with direct att tack upon the railroads and their rate making methods. which is perhaps the most lucid explanation of the whole situation yet seen in print.
 There is no more important Ques- ton before the American nation to- day. he says. "than this of making very sure that when they have in- vested their hundreds of millions of dollars in the canal, it shall be per- mitted to give them returns on the in yest-nent.
 1.-The Panama Canal will earn the re- turns. albeit perhaps indirectly. if it is given the chance. But it will not be given the chance if the transcon- tinental railroads can prevent
 Decade after decade, the great east and west railroad systems opposed and prevented the building of the canal. They knew what it's competition would mean in the reduction of their freight rates.
 .'The canal. however, is being dug. Not because the public rose to an acute realization of the commercial necessity for it, but hecs use of the Oregon's trip from the Pacific to the Atlantic. That one voyage of one battleship, in a time of national crisis. served to crystalize a purpose in the national mind that all the powers of railroad finance and rai1rosd politics could not thwart.
 Today 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 notion the commercial benefits which that work must bring if it shall not be a disap- pointment and failure.
 Do not imagine that I have be- come afflicted with any populistic an- ti-railroad mania. There is not a transportation authority among all the rulers of the rail who will claim more for the steam railroad as a fac- tor in the development of the country, past. present, or future, than I 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 hostility is based on a narrow conception. a short-sighted view. But, reasonable or unreasonable 1t is the fact.
 "we are spending s4o0 100000 digging at a cansl which ought to reduce freight rates across our continent to a
 
 commercial justifica ton of that ex- penditure will never be found, as I have heretofore tried to show, in the ifrpetus that will be given our foreien trade. It must be found in benefit to our domestic commerce.
 Water transportation is the che9 D. est known to the world. Wherever there is free and fair competition, the water highway takes the business from the railroad. Year after year, larger and larger proportion of Lon den's coal comes down from the north of England by the seq. Year after year. the importance of the internal water routes-rivers and canals-on the Continent of Europe increases, as they carry a stea adily increasing pro- portion of the freight traffic. Why? Because it is more economical to move traffic by water than by land.
 ''Yet for many years we have con- scented, that the railroads shou'd mon opolize the trans s-continental traffic which canal would have carried at greater speed and vestly less cost We have developed our continent thus far without thought of the possibilities of the greatest transcontinental trade Toute-that via the Atlantic, the can- al and the Pacific-and without con- sideration of the possibilities of our imperial system of rivers.
 -sThe canal is going to force atten- ton to these things. if only the coun- try can be aroused to understand it's immense potentfalities. But how snany people who read this know that it will be possible to ship the oranges of southern California from Los Ange- les to New York or Boston in fewer days by steamship through the Pana- ma Canal when completed, than by fast freight across the country?
 ''The distance from New York to Los Angeles via the Panama Canal is, frf round number five thousand miles.