The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-08-03

million dollars for wagon roads. These are tidy sums to be expended for trans portation in country no larger that Texas, and it makes the five hundred mil lions, which is about all the United States has spent on rivers and harborsi dduring our whole history. look rather small
 In England on the harbors of Newcas- tie, Glasgow, Liverpool and Maneheste' | alone. three hundred and seyenty-five mill lion dollars have been spent.
 Germany has already expended hun
 dreds of millions on her harbors. and terminals, and at Bremerhaven, and Ham,
 burg has built among the best in the world.
 | If the project for port of Birmingham excites your smiles, let me say that Man helm, three hundred (3O0 miles up the
 Rhine, has almost square mile of dreds- ed harbor, three (S) miles of docks, ano | nine (9) miles of improved shore line.
 There are twenty (2O) harbors in Germany,
 from one hundred d00) to three hundreH
 and fifty (S50) miles inland. | On the harbors of seven seaports abroao' l there has been spent as much as tne United States has laid out on all its rivers
 and harbors in all it's history. l Even in South America, the despised | Spanish Americans of our competnS
 wheat regions, are deepening the Uruguay
 river to twenty-one (2D feet for six hun | dred (6ON miles, have dredged the fParana for one thousand Q0o0) miles ana
 snendingI fifteen million dollars (S15, GOO, 00Oi on the docks of Rosario, an interior city four hundred (4OV miles from the sea
 Foreign cities and nations have already | developed or are rapidly constructins l these tools of trade'' which, in spite or nresent magnitude of requirements, our cities are only beginning to discuss. Ars our competitors chasing rainbows an1 literally throwing their money in tn"
 wafer? DO not believe it. They know
 what thev are about, and have proved bv mast experience that they have peVer oul't big enough.
 | Tn this country, in spite Of our larse 1 volume of water-borne traffic, eompara, lively we have only just begun In iano
 .n.,s,orta+ion we have everybody else "haaten to a frazzle,' and it is not to ba douhted that when we fully awake T to the magnitude of the problem thar | confronts us we shall in water trans nortation and in terminals for the inter change of commodities between the ~No l systems, stand pre-eminent also.
 WARFARE OF THE FUTURE ! The warfare of the future, as of the Ipresent, is the competition for supremac' in carrying to the ends of the earth things to feed, shelter and cfothe man l Iwith each passing year. In the last anal ivsis. the victors must be the people wltn the most productive soil, the greates national energy the best and cheapest transportation, the deepest and saless lharbors. and the wisest conservation O. natural resources: and, broadly speaN ing the same conditions and principies twill prevail between our cIues.
 | The city of Birmingham cannot ex l oect to escape it's share of expenditure for these purposes, and thereafter shar' l ;p the commerce and prosperity created 1 shereby. If any such idea is extant the lessons of the past have gone fol l ,aught. and those of the future will have to be learned to the shame of it's citi- zens.
 To grow and prosper our cities. Bir. | mingham among the rest, must arise to the occasion and create terminal facillties not only to hold, but to increase the volume of business against their com mercal competitors. This is what MT l James J. Hill means when he says ma.
 ..the commercial problem of the future
 ,s inc problem of terminals and failure | to nlan wisely will result in a loss thai 1 will be appalling. And such developmen. pays.
 No similar sum ever expended by any one has paid better than the investment os the government in the improvement , ! . l Lakes for today ton Of ore can hf 1 shipped from aDuluth to Ashtabula, Con neaut or Cleveland, distance of nearlN l lC0O miles for 10 cents less than itecostS to ship the same ton from one of thesf ports to Pttsburg. distance Of anou 150 miles, Differently expressed, this eX l penditure makes it possible to send a tor of ore from the vast ranges of the nortt
 to an Erie port by ship, for about 8 , cents, while the rail rate is proportion . ally times greater: which means tha the vessels of the Great Lakes are say ing yearly on ore alone. nearly S2O0 .OO6 sl Were it not for this saving all stee products, from rails to rivets, would ad vance in price, and the United State
 would not be able to control the stee | markets of the world.
 l The analogy between these condition
 and those which will obtain by the de , velopment of the Warrior terminal L
 the city of Birmingham in such man ner as will enable it to handle more ton : mage for less money than any of it
 competitors, holds; and as certain as thu , sun rises, when the development is com
 plete, the business will come to it's ter. i minal and the resulting profit be taker . 1 by it's citizens
 No halfway measures of development i however, will meet even the present re . auiremen ents, to say nothing of the eco i; homie and industrial needs of the flu
 ture Only by the most far-sighted grasping of the problem can those need
 be met, and the city of Birmingham
 can, by proper development, pay not only
 the cost thereof, but can thereby pro r vide revenue to the city which would pay for the proposed civic center, if not fo, all the cty's other activities and ex- ! penses, besides having an asset grow 3 ing more and more valuable through tho , centuries and providing larger and la ger l revenues as the city's growth and re
 quirements increase.
 | The traffic survey of the Birmingham district, recently completed for the War n rior river development committee, show. an outbound tonnage of about 1,500o | tons, or about 5000 cars of 90 tons each of a value of about ST ,000,0O This tonnage is reasonably regular ir it's movement, it's seasonal movement varying from about 112Oo0 tons in tn month of January to about 10000 ton. | in the month of August. This volum and regularity of movement insures a
 once the success of the outbound com l merce.
 II Unfortunately, however. the reverse O the picture is not so rosy. for it is yer, difficult, if not almost impossible for z transportation service to exist on one way traffic, and the return haul is tn 1 problem of the Warrior transportation | | as 1t is of most others.
 The same traffic survey shows an in
 bound tonnage to the Birmingham dis trict only about 10000 tons yearly. O