OCR Text |
Show CANALS. While continental Europe is pretty well grid-ironed grid-ironed with railroads, it is a strange fact that more and more money is all the time being ex-, pended there on canals. The truth is that there is no other so cheap a way to move freight as by water. There is no friction on the machinery, no wear-out to the track. In our country freight on railroads has been reduced, in the carrying of eastern crops, to a rate deemed impossible only a generation ago. But still when one glances at the map, it is hard to shake off an impression that nature planned a different way to move the harvests of the Mississippi or Missouri valleys. The father of waters has a meaning of its own. For three thousand and more miles it ploughs its mighty way from the wheat fields of Minnesota to the cotton and sugar lined shores of the Gulf. For a thousand miles west of its right bank the country stretches away, without any undulations that would prevent the construction and working work-ing of canals. The soil and climate favor the cultivation of bulky but cheap and necessary crops, why should not those crops be moved by water to a market? If thereby the farmer could save a few pennies only per bushel, the aggregate would be something tremendous. It is easy to imagine that in fifty years more the great river will be safely harnessed by embankments, by dredging, by artificial lakes to relieve the river in times of high water and that canals will, enter it at right angles, so that boats loaded at Wichita or Yankton will find their way at trifling cost to where the ocean craft will meet them at New Orleans. This is the more probable, because when reclamation rec-lamation is carried on a little further and its vast advantages shall be more fully realized, then the Missouri and Mississippi valleys will be invaded in force, the canals and reservoirs will be constructed con-structed and the next thought will be: "If the canal can double our crop, why should not the canal carry the crop to market?" We tell how since 49 the whole west has been redeemed, the truth is that the redemption has only just begun. When all the great valley is under enlightened cultivation and the means are at hand to have the crops moved at the least possible pos-sible expense, then full redemption will have come. The most important thing in this world is to obtain full cultivation of the soils. T.iat makes water the chiefest factor in the world. Wait until it is fully realized. |