The Birmingham age-herald., 1921-01-10
WARRIOR FLEETS INCREASE TRADE
 BY BIG PER CENT
Annual Report of Business Shows Remarkable Volume of River Traffic-Coming
 Year May Set Totals

Mobile, January 9.-cSpecial )-The an- of the Warrior river barge line system, that has just been completed. shows a remarkable growth of trade during the year 1920 The annual report places the business increase at s per cent as com pared with the previous year of 1919
 The amount of freight. practically ali one-way, handled in 1920 was 2495s5, U6 pounds, or little over 124, 797 tons, against l47, 4676S pounds or about 73,7& tons in 1919, and this was accomplished without the addition of any new floating equip ment, as none of the barges or t0wboats, built for the Warrior river, were de- livered in time to be put in service be- fore the end of 1920.
 The maximum capacity of the floating equipment in the Warrior river service in two years was approximately Iu,Ic tons of one-way freight. With the ad- dition of the four steel barges and three steel towboats which will be in commits sion early this year the maximum ca pacity of the river equipment will be in- creased to something like ,250000 tons.
 FLEET OF FOUR
 Of the four self -propelled steel barges built for the Warrior river service, one. the Birmingham, has been delivered ana is now up the river on her second round 1 trip between Cordova and New Orleans. I The Tuscaloosa. the second of the barges l to be delivered. is below Memphis en | route to the Warrior river
 1 The Cordova the first of the steel towboats, has been delivered, and is up ] the river on her first trip. and the other | two towboats. the Demopolis and Mont
 gomery. are en route to the Warrior
 with the barge Tuscaloosa, and will prop- ably be at Mobile within 10 days.
 l During the closing months of 1s2' a heavy movement of export steel and fab ricated steel for the Chickasaw yards from Birmingham set in, and the ndi,
 cations are that during the present year 1 this will grow into large proportions. h each of the two or three months during ] the period $500 tons of steel came dowr | the Warrior river on barges; and the lack of facilities is the only thing thai
 kept the tonnage down to these figures TONNAGE INCREASES
 Within the last few months there has been an increase in the tonnage going III i the river. one of the principal items thus moving being manganese ore from Brazi destined for the steel mills at Birming ham, One cargo of $500 tons arrived al ] Mobile the middle of December, ana wa! transferred to baJges. Another ship ment of approximately 1000 tons is du' here about January 20. and the river man agement has been requested to max preparations for handling it.
 The inauguration of service by the seir propelled barges of the Birmingham typ' will enable the river management to han dle general merchandise, which could no be done with the old open barges here
 tofore in use, and merchants at Mobile Birmingham, Tuscaloosa and New or leans have pledged their support in tn effort to build up this kind of traffic. It has been stated that one interest Il Atlanta. one of the largest consumers O sugar in the country, has decided to giv the Warrior service a trial routing tnei l purchases of sugar in New Orleans b. way of the river barge line to Birrning port there to be transferred to tn Southern railway for transportation tn remainder of the distance.
 Atlanta being included in the Birming ham joint ral-water rate would get tn benefit of the 80 per cent all-rail rat from New Orleans to Birmingham, tn
 goods being billed through from Nev Orleans to Atlanta.