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Show NEW WATER ROUTE. It is probable that the geaeral public pub-lic overlooked a really important bit of news, printed the other day. It was not given headline display, but it marked the beginning of a new era for American commerce, since it noted the inauguration of direct water traffic between be-tween Chicago and other great lakes ports and points in Europe. The first vessel in this new trade channel was 'an all-steel ship built by the emergency fleet corporation. The sailing of the Granby from Chicago not only signalized sig-nalized the first shipment of peace time commodities direct from the western metropolis to Europe, without transfer or reloading, but also marked tho entrance en-trance of the federal shipping board into the commercial field of Chicago and the great middle west as a competitor com-petitor of the gigantic transatlantic steamship companies engaged in the freight-carrying trade. Tho carrier charges from Chicago to Liverpool aro materially less than the rates asked from New York to the British seaport. It is the intention to extend this all-water all-water transportation system to include Detroit, Milwaukee, Cleveland and Buffalo, Buf-falo, although the Ohio and New York cities, because of their proximity to the seacoast, will not be exploited at present as competing points of shipment. ship-ment. The Chicago-Milwaukee trade, however, is expected to develop immensely. im-mensely. It is interesting to recall in this connection con-nection the attempt of the government of the Dominion of Canada to shorten the trade channel to Europe, inaugurated inaugu-rated by the late Sir TVilfrid Laurier and his cabinet as- long ago as 1910. The great development of the grain-growing grain-growing districts of the Peace" Biver valley and the wheat fields of Saskatchewan Sas-katchewan and Manitoba, caused the Laurier government to plan a water route to connect with the dominion-owned dominion-owned railroad being constructed from western Saskatchewan to the western shore of Hudson bay. The water route materially shortened the distance from the grain-gTowing regions of western Canada to Liverpool. Port Churchill was the shipping point on the bay, and carrier charges for western west-ern Canada shippers were fixed at rates considerably lower than that required for rail shipment to Montreal, and thence to- Liverpool by Atlantic vessels. ves-sels. The outbreak of the great war interfered with the full fruition of this really pretentious plan of Sir Wilfrid, which was taken up by his successor in the premiership, Sir Robert Borden, after the dominion elections in 1911. The Ottawa government now has under consideration legislation to carry ahead this new trade route. It will be interesting to watch the development of this new traffic system in both the United -States and its neighbor to the north. |