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June, 1905 COAL AND TIMBER
magnitude of her manufactures nor the
prosperity of her people, approached that
of to-day, completed her own Erie canal
in eight years, and provided $51,000,000 with
which to do it. The great Kaiser-Wilhelm
canal, connecting the Baltic and the North
sea, was completed in eight years by the
German people at a cost exceeding $40,000,-
000. The conservative and plodding English
people erected the canal from Manchester,
36 miles long and 26 feet deep, at a cost
of $75,000,000, in seven years.
Having in mind, therefore, the traditional
enterprise and liberality of our people, how
absurdly penurious it seems that a quarter
of a century must elapse before the necessary
and yet moderate expenses of this great
undertaking can be provided for by the
richest government in the world. It appears
none the less unreasonable when we
realize that the six states skirted by this
valley pay practically one half of the entire
revenues of the Nation.
The great industrial metropolis at the
source of this stream would be twice her
present size today, were it not for the dog
in the manger policy of those who have
hindered the entrance of new railroad systems
and discouraged the development of
our water ways. But the bright light of
commercial wisdom, like the X rays of
science, is penetrating this "stand-still system,"
and revealing the stiff joints, the
dead bones and the congested blood within.
with the result that our intelligent enthusiasm
has been at last aroused and will
prohibit men from longer whistling "downbreaks"
on the wheels of progress, or nailing
fast the hands on the dial of time.
All the discouragements and delays that
would ordinarily dishearten the most dauntless
spirits have been encountered and overcome
in this great enterprise by men whose
eternal watchword is "work" and whose
ambitions never end but in the achievment
of their purposes, and as the waters of
this mighty stream go gliding to the Gulf,
and thundering over the wickets they will
sing perpetual praise to Dravo, Henderson,
Rodgers, Anderson, Vance, and kindred
spirits who are gradually making a dream
a deed and a romance a reality.
In keeping with the pessimistic spirit of
those who are eternally looking backward,
there are many who declare that the days
of inland waterway transportation are over.'
In answer to that one of the greatest commercial
authorities in the world, the London
Chamber of Commerce not long since,
declared that the continued improvement
and development of inland waterways by
Austria, France and Germany was in keeping
with the most enlightened commercial
policy of modern times, giving the easiest
and most economical transportation to
markets, and that Great Britian must follow
in their footsteps or drop out of the race
for commercial supremacy.
The policy of all far seeing countries
is now and has been in recent years to increase
the depth of nearly all natural and
artificial waterways, owing to the increased
carrying capacity of modern water craft.
Within 25 years ocean steamers have increased
their capacity from 2,500 to 11,000
tons, while the average freight car which
had then 15 tons has now 50 tons capacity.
Moreover as the genius and handicraft of
Western Pennsylvania produced the steel
car, give us the great slack water system
we ask, and at no distant date Pittsburg
will produce a steel barge that may be
loaded in our local harbors and sent from
port to port and sea to sea, returning to us
with the needed products of other countries.
The cry for increased transportation facilities
by land and water is louder and
stronger than ever before. During the past
Hon. James Francis Burke, M. C.
year coal mines in Western Pennsylvania
were compelled to shut down for lack of
sufficient cars to transport their products
to the market; the story of how millions
of tons of the products of our mills and
mines have in the past been compelled to
lie sleeping in our local harbors awaiting
a stage of water that could bear them away
to markets that were hungering for their
coming.
If all the mills and mines on earth were
centered here, even though manned by the
most skilled of our Creator's craftsmen,
their minerals would sleep in the hills forever
and their wheels would never turn
were there no mediums of transportation
through which their products might reach
the waiting markets of civilization.
As the rich, red blood of life finds its
way to and from the heart of the human
system and gives and sustains life, so would
these great arteries conduct to and from
the very heart of our industrial empire the
corpuscles of commercial
life, and thus
strengthen the entire republic from border
to border.
Let no railway be apprehensive
of diminished business by competition. We
have already proven that we can and will
increase our products with equal if not
greater rapidity than they can increase their
mediums of transportation.
We want cars and steamers not only
burdened with our products as they leave
our gates but to return filled with the fruits
of labor from the genial climate of the
South, the fertile soil of the West, the
rugged forests of the North and the busy
cities of the East.
We have been sending our capital to
open mills in the South, to build railways
in Russia, to develop mines in Mexico,
to light, the streets of London and to promote
a thousand other enterprises in distant
lands
while the possibilities of development
and profit are a hundred
fold
greater here in this great valley and we
'but
stop and study its wonderful possibilities.
RAILROAD RACE IN ALABAMA.
The Louisville & Nashville and the Southern
railways are engaging in a race into
Walker county, Alabama, with the phenomenal
coal traffic there as a goal. The coal
trade in that part of Alabama is growing
at a remarkable rate. Both of the railroads
are preparing to build from 15 to
20 miles of track right into the heart of
the new coal region. The work is to be
done this summer. Coal companies are
now preparing to develop the territory on
a large scale and some have begun operations.
The Louisville & Nashville railroad will
extend its Mineral Springs branch, which
now runs to Warrior river at Banner mines,
to the edge of Jefferson county. This
branch touches the mines of the Pratt Consolidated
Coal Co. It is proposed to extend
the line to the middle of Walker
county, crossing the Warrior river and the
Little Warrior river enroute.
The Southern railway proposes to extend
the Ensley Southern, now extending from
Ensley on a branch of the Southern, to
Short Creek, near the Warrior river, where
the Tutweiler Coal, Iron & Coke Co. has
mines. The extension will run as far as
Parrish in Walker county, where the Northern
Alabama railroad has terminals. The
Northern Alabama is the property of the
Southern railway, and has branches to coal
mines in Walker county, between Parrish
and Jasper, and in Winston county, from
Gamble and Leon The distance from Short
Creek, in Jefferson county, to Parrish, in
Walker county, is but ten miles and it runs
through a very rich coal field.Branches are
likely to be constructed from this extension
both up and down the valleys to valuable
coal fields which are being purchased at a
very rapid rate.