Eureka Reporter | 1907-11-22 | Page 7 | Lakes to the Gulf Waterway

1 SLOGAN OF TEE MN 17 71 INLAND DRAM STATES DEMAND THAT THE SEA BE BROUGHT NEARER TO T THE FI R SOURCE OF THE NATIONS commercial SUPREMACY THE CHICAGO DRAINAGE CANAL THE FIRST TO OPEN THE GIGANTIC HIGHWAY ma on the plea of self defence merchants and of the middle west have gov ea en impetus to a movement f for or a great in land ma waterway system that ilk promises to re main in the forefront of national at af fairs for years to come every section of the country not botac ac dually within the seaboard 4 zone has tak en up the agi tation for a great inland waterway and is likely to I 1 continue the campaign until the national government is commit teddo ted to a policy that will place any mav navigable stream of considerable dl mens Inell lons in touch with ocean corn coin anece president roosevelt Boo sevelt is expected to inake a strong recommendation in his coming annual message on the sub eject of a lakes to the gulf system of d aters atei routes such an undertaking as at present mapped out would equal in magnitude the construction of the panama canal the cost of the two projects it Is estimated would be about the same advocates of the in land waterways assert that they would be of infinitely greater benefit to the united states than the canal and that without a comprehensive system of internal marine highways this nation bould be reaping only a fragment of the great commercial prestige to which k the completion of the panama anali entitles it residents and leaders lead rs of thou thought ht in IS 18 states of the union are already mightily interested in the in land waterways wate mays agitation A national commission to measure the benefits ot the project Is likely to be appointed within a short time the recent trip of the president through the sippi valley culminating in his ad dress before the lakes to the gull gult deep waters ays convention Is re gardial through the central section ot of the country as committing the present administration to the 14 foot channel project the annual national river congress that Is held in washington just before the regular tall fall session of congress begins Is re lied upon to keep public interest arous ed is as to the necessity of the under taking chicago canal a start a 1 fourteen arteen feet through the valley will be the slogan with which the ad of the inland waterways im pro proT ement projects will press their before congress they main tain that all ot of the statistics and ments are on their side and that the present condition of affairs in the coin iter Olal world Is an unerring indica tio nhat the country s future develop ment merit depends hot not alone upon the ex mansion of railroad mileage but upon the improvement of the great water nater highways s of the country what Is being urged by the business interests of the great central country is a settled policy of the improvement that will begin at lake michigan and terminate at the delta of the sippi it was for the inauguration of this settled national policy that the recent convention was held in mem phi S this two days convention wound up the presidents president s tour of the sippi valley bouha outlay y of 50 COO already a start on this lakes to the gulf waterway hag has begun the chi cago drainage canal extending from tire them shore of lake michigan at the chi caso cago aher to a point between lock port and collet allet III is regarded as the initial stretch of the great highway the drainage canal Is approximately 36 miles in length and as completed is available from end to end as a navi gable waterway capable of accomma dating vessels drawing draing 20 feet of wa ter the cost of the canal has been approximately 50 all the out lay has been borne by chicago as a but it is understood that for commercial purposes the city is willing to give the national govern ment navigation control of it tor six miles the canal follows the chicago river to its head beyond that point it runs for ar ties les through earth and rock excavation to the des plaines river it continues along the waterway for eight miles in order to make the drainage canal a commer cial va waterway capable of floating ves yes sels of large tonnage the engineers of the project expended 18 more than would have been necessary tor for sanitary purposes only the canal would have met all of the drainage and natural watershed necessities at a considerably less depth than the 22 feet at which it was carried out the objective of the creators of the canal was not only to dispose of chicago s sewage by doerting dh erting it from lake michigan where it threatened con lamination tamin atlon of the city water supply but the establishment of a navigable waterway from the lake to the mis sis sippi via the illinois river it Is from lake joliet that the next step in the great lake to gulf high way is expected to be taken the ter between joliet and grafton above st louis has been closely sur veed and a series of pools or artificial lakes has been mapped out to mark the levels alborg what Is projected as the beginning of the great fourteen feet through the valley water course the first level will be the section be tween joliet and utica a distance of 54 miles with itha a dallof fall of 66 feet in this distance dic tance it Is estimated that three pools dams or locks will be necessary and that a 14 foot waterway easily can be maintained with a width of feet between utica and the mouth of the illinois aher rh er where here m it empties into the mississippi river at grafton is miles the bed of the illinois river along this distance is between six hundred and nine hundred feet wide along the route the federal government has already completed several locks and dams to secure a 14 foot depth here hydraulic dredging averaging seven feet will be feces sary this will necessitate the ecca nation of cubic bards ards of soft earth the estimated cost of which has been fixed by engineers at 7 to control mississippi between the mouth of the illinois at grafton and the harbor limits of st louis the distance down the mis sis sippi river Is 39 miles in this stretch the mississippi falls 21 feet it Is the magnitude of keeping the great mississippi tractable and within bounds and providing a 14 toot foot chan nel from st louis to the gulf of mex ico that has given the greatest en ginders of the country pause what the completion of that undertaking will cost no one professes to know ac curatelo cura tely surmises vary between and A consider able percentage of the former sum has already been expended iu piecemeal improvements on the father of wa engineers admit that much of this outlay has been practically wast ed because the a or nas as not carried on along any well defined plan it is for the laying out of a general plan of mississippi valley improvement that the business interests of the great central west are now bendina bending their energies after surveying the territory between jollet joliet and st louis a board of army engineers a few years ago es timatea that the cost of a 14 foot wa between those points would cost about the feasibility of continuing that stretch at the same depth as the chicago drainage canal there is no doubt the only questions to be considered are those of dredging and water supply in the opinion of lyman E cooley at chicago one of the greatest en authorities of the country the practicability of carrying the big inland water highway to successful completion depends upon the mastery of the middle mississippi between st louis and cairo the total distance of the projected continuous navigable channel from lake michigan at chi cago to the eads jetties in the gulf of mexico Is 1 1625 miles and the fall Is feet from the lake level to the gulf level D aff if collies to overcome Bet between Neen st louis and cairo dif faculties that a few years ago would have been regarded as insurmountable will unquestionably be encountered the slope there averages only seven inches per mile for the entire distance of miles at normal low water the volume between those two points Is 56 second feet with the river in normal flood it rises to ten tell times that flow and in times of i ary flood has reached between L and 1000 1 second feet A flood I 1 volume of such magnitude on a slope I 1 so deep produces a waterway of im mense breadth with uncertain depth at low water the low water season m when hen the riv er depth is frequently less than 12 feet averages days yearly in the district between st louis and cairo the alluvial deposits incident to the flood overflows mist of course be taken into consideration in any scheme for the curbing of the mississippi is s width that has the maintenance of an all the year round deep channel as its objective saving banks and exten sive levee construction must be under taken it is conceded in such a way as not to deprive the bottom of the enormous wealth of alluvial deposits following floods to keep the cou course ree it Is the working out of a system of retaining banks that will not affect the wealth of the mississippi valley coun try and at the same time regulate to a certainty the all the year round channel depth of the river that pre tents the greatest problem in the working out of the 14 foot channel proposition of course a maintained depth of 14 feet will demand less width in the river in the vicinity of the bottom and will aill probably produce changes in slopes requiring great corrective work mr cooley estimates that a aa per cent increment to the mississippi flow Is possible by using the entire volume of water that can come through the chicago canal he esti estl mates a like increment by the es of comprehensive reser doirs on the upper mississippi this would make a 12 foot minimum chan nel net during the period of low water and ghe the waterway a depth of from IS 18 to 19 fet under normal con dillons from the red river to the mouth of the mississippi a distance of miles the gulf level is main bained it Is between the red river and the ohio at cairo that the great B est outlay for artificial improvement of the mississippi would be feces sary the distance between those two points Is miles all of the tug big en gi feats wl will 11 have to be ac compi shed within that territory it if a stable channel of 14 feet can be maintained in that stretch engineers decare declare that the seaboard will no longer terminate at the mississippi delta but will actually stretch 1600 miles inland to the shore of lake michigan 19 an immeasurable good it Is confident asserted by champions of th the mis valley ocean highways highway will come from the establishment of a 14 foot channel between chicago and the gulf of me mexico aico xico the annual value it of the internal commerce of the united states Is 22 this is the fixed by statisticians of the nearly yearly value of the international corn coin nerce merce of the world it is confidently asserted isser ted that with the lefoot 14 foot water highway through the length of the mississippi valley the internal corn coin nerce merce of the united states would be mm ensely increased hundreds of of dollars worth of materials t is declared now go to waste in the reat middle west because of the ina of the railway systems of the country to transport them the rhe con it is pointed out on the au an dhority of such experts as james J and E H harriman is becoming j of grain could not be moved last year yeal because of the railway congestion and the west suffered a coal famine be cause cars were not available and the limit of transportation had been reached in other ways james J hill has pointed out that not only has the limit been reached in th tha movement of freight but even hou d cars locomotives and tracks be supplied sip plied there Is now and Is bound to be for years to come a dearth of terminal fa I 1 ties mr air hill has esti estl mated that the cost of constructing sufficient railway raila ay lines to meet the fin mediate demands tor for moving the corn coin merce of the country would require an outlay of this esti estl mate he declares gives little or no consideration to the future mr air har riman a short time since announced that in order to meet transportation requirements the gauge of the railways of the country and the rolling stock would have to be doubled some time ago mr hill said 1 I asked a real estate man what it would cost to get a tier of blocks one of the narrowest from the harlem river to thirty third street new york H he e came back in a week and said that would not buy it that means that for terminals alone it would cost a mile tor for every mile from chicago to new york be fore the line was built the railroads cant can t pay rent on such high priced term terminal iaal property matter Is urgent this matter of transportation Is a most urgent one people think there Is no limit to what the railroads can do there Is a very present limit to many railroads in the volume of busl bust ness we have to do it takes money to run railroads there is a want of money in every center where the business has grown the fastest there the want is 1 greatest traffic Is grow ing five times as fast as railroad mile age we might as well put railroad improvement out of the question hundreds of millions of dollars it Is admitted would be saved annually by the substitution of water transports tran tion for the present railroad tran tation between the central west and the seashore statistics gathered from all quarters quarter of the united states demonstrate that water carriage of freight costs less than one sixth that toy for railroad transportation the latest schedules place the freight charge a bushel of wheat from chicago to new york at 10 20 cents as against 5 51 cents by lake and canal the cost from st louis to new orleans by river Is 4 25 cents as against cents by rail between st louis and new york despite this very great difference in cost the tonnage of the mississippi from st louis to its mouth has stead ily decreased since 1880 in that year thi the number of vessels arriving there was 4 the total tonnage receipts and shipments amounted to ta 2 in 1890 the number of vessels arriving was 3 and the tonnage waa was 1 1281 in 1900 the number of vessels fell to 2 2217 and the tonnage to at the present time st louis mississippi tonnage Is only while the argument Is made by the champions ol 01 the inland waterway project that river regulation is rate regulation and that the improvement of the great waterways of the coun try will do more to regulate freight charges than all the interstate corn coin merce laws that can be enacted railroad men declare that a fur ther lou lowering ering of railroad freight rates is really impracticable they point out that with the great rail systems system s of the country operating to their fullest capacity they are earning only a fair return on the capital invested fur ther reduction in railroad charges they maInt maintain aln cannot be made while the outlay tor for maintenance and operation remains at the present figure as 07 41 r 2 0 shaded portion shows waterways emptying into the gulf of mexico and the junca on of the chicago dra n nage age canal with the illino a river greater every jear ear without prospect of increasing railroad facilities to any considerable extent railroads reach lim t during the last decade the internal commerce of the united states has in creased more than per cent while the railroad transportation facilities have increased only 25 per cent and are now practically at a standstill all of the railroad transportation ex admit thit the big trans conti cental lines are being worked to their fullest capacity millions of bushels k