New Britain herald., 1922-11-27
EUROPEANS DEVELOP INLAND WATERWAYS
Progressive Commercial Nations Make Most Of Canal Systems

Washington, Nov. 27.--"The United ! States" says n Bulletin just issued b,
 the National Rivers and Harbors Con,
 gress, '.is a solid body of land. while
 Europe is peninsula made up ol
 peninsulas. The United States has ni
 area of 3.o2s,7s9 square miles and
 21,s62 miles of coast line. Europe
 has an area of 3,bS4.250 square miles
 and 47,700 miles of coast line, that is
 to say, Europe, with an area greater than that of the United States by only
 one-sixth, has a coast line nearly two
 and one-half times as long," The re-
 markable difference in the outlines
 of the two continents Is strikingly il-
 lustrated by placing shaded map
 of Europe directly upon m outline
 map of the United States, and the
 Bulletin proceeds to shaw that 1t is
 not a mere matter of geographical curiosity but sas some very import ant economic results. Because of It's irregularity of out line," says the Bulletin, nearly all of Europe lies close to the sea--that great natural highway which supplies the cheapest transportation in the world. One must go clear into the heart of Russia. almost to Moscow, to reach a point which is as far from tidewater as Concinnati is from Bal timore. The southernmost tip of Germany is only little more than 400 miles from Bremen, while there is vast territory in the United States, more than five times as large as the German. Empire before the war, which lies from 300 to nearly 1,2oo miles from tidewater in an air line and from 800 to more than 1,500 miles by rail.
 Develop Inland Waterways.
 There is another difference no less striking and important which this map does not show, for in spite of their comparative nearness to the sea. the countries of Europe have done .Ar more than the United States in de- veloping inland waterways. The Unit ed states has 2s,000 miles of noninal- ly navigable waterways. AS a matter of fact, however, only about 2,000 miles of these waterways have been sufficiently improved to make their channels dependably navigable, while France, Belgium, Holland and Ger many--as it was before the war, which together have only about one- seventh of the area of the United States, have 23,200 miles of connect ed inland waterways which arc both dependably navigable and actually navigated.
 Holland, Belgium and Germany combined have, or rather had, an area less than one-thirteenth that of the United States being in fact 33,- 900 square miles smaller than the state of Texas; a. population smaller by 14,000,000 souls; soil and climate no better, to say the least; less than, half the accumulated wealth.; and natural resources not a tenth as great as ours. But nearness to the sea and improved waterways enabled hese three little countries to overcome all these handicaps so that they had de- veloped, before the war, foreign commerce which exceeded that of the United States by from sS,oo0, ,oo0,o 900 to $4,OOO, 100000 a year.
 Handicap of Inland Points.
 Considerably more than one-third of the United States is from two to six times as fat from tidewater as any spot in Europe west of Moscow and, 1t goes without saying that this territory starts with very serious handicap in competing for foreign trade. On top of this has come the 100 per cent in crease in railroad freight rates which has taken place since 1s14. The re- suit of this has been exactly the same as if this territory had been pushed back until it was twice as far from as 1t was before for, as has been well said by an English writer, It is not mileage but cost of trans portation that constitutes the true measure of distance
 livery increase in freight rates decreases the dis tance within which commodities of | any kind may be profitably marketed. Not only do manufacturers in this in and territory find themselves largely | shut out of the markets of the world. put the farmers find themselves barred from the markets in the east ,rn part of their country. Grain from. Argentina can be--afid has been--laid town in New York and other sea- board cities for much less than 1t could be shipped from Kansas and Nebraska and, not so many months lgo, farmers on the western prairies