The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-12-08
PLOT TO FILL
 CANAL EXPOSED
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 been missing something My memory flashed back to the Rhine, where even during the bliGhting days of foreign oc- cupation the smoke-clouds of river freighters blurred every vista; to the Rhone where strings of 0arges with the products of Switzerland, Burgundy and busy Lyons made black threads all along the beryl-colored flood; to the Scheldt where innumerable small craft fed the greatest port of the continent; to the Thames, crowded like Broadway With traffic
 Roads Use Strategy
 Besides these remembrances l put my climpses of American rivers All pre- sented to the casual eye the same aspect as the Raritan- l had crossed and recrossed the Missouri, l had motored down the banks of the Snake, l had viewed twenty miles of the Mlsslsslppl from the bluff above St Paul; and had seen on their waters no craft big ger or more servceable than that row boat of the Raritan- Our waterways, compared to those of Europe. looked in rredibIy wide and very lonely Amer ica was not using its rivers Europe was Why?
 Perhaps I have already answered that: because th" American railroads de not want to use our rivers W ater transportation competes with rail trans portation In the item of bulky, i'm perishable freight, il competees on terms which the railroad cannot meet Tn a fair fight Always, the railway trat- fife manager has looked upon the inland steamboat as the proprietor ot a village grocery looks upon the new chain 1o bIlt i it is taking the bread out of his mouth He fights it., humanly and naturally with whatever weapons he has
 Using poor and loose strategy in old years, much better strategy as they con solidated their power. combined, adopt ed permanent policies. the railroads have done their best to wipe the traffic from inland waterways. And that best l has been very good indeed When the railroads reached the Mississippi, they found it alive with craft-that old syS- tenn of river steamboating which Mark Twain has immortaliZed- By the end of the century. little cotton-frelghtlnG on the lower river told the whole story of transportation on the greatest North American waterway. For time. they swept the Ohio as clean as board Virtually. they ended freight tr&nspor tation on the Sacramento; they pre- vented it's beginnings on the Snake they left to the lordly Columbia only q l little agricultural traffic from one val | ley ill Idaho.
 Steel Wants Water
 The railroads have won such com plete victories mainly in the south anc west. Speaking in terms of economies the west is the railroads; population and wealth have sprung up only as tho transcontinentaI lines have opened the way To lesser degree, this applies also to the south.
 In those regions, there are no other acrumulatons of capital strong enough | to buck the combined power of the rail roads. In the east such accumulation' do exist and here and there. where tht railroad policies have encountered ef fectivp opposition. we find an exception to the rule The So-called steel trus wanted cheap water transportation II and out of PittSburg; and they got 1t The Monongrhela carried last year 23. CUU GOO tons of coal and coal products and this in spite of the fact that the ter ritury is crossed by seven great rail road lines Cheap water transporta lion made PittSburg what it WAS anC iS This. however, Is the extreme ant golden example of inland water trans