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Show A Great Work DESPITE the war, Franco has finished the canal which now connects Marseilles with Aries on the Rhone. It is fifty miles long, and by its connection with the Rhone, it is also brought in connection with all the internal canals of Franco and the river Rhine. It has been under construction twelve years and has cost $20,000,000. With its opening on May 7th came the announcement that henceforth Marseilles would be a free port. This the French people believe will soon make Marseilles Mar-seilles a strong rival of Hamburg In the world's trade for it practically will be the very center of all the export and import trade of France, and practically place the factories of central Franco on the sea shore. It opens the same opportunities to Marseilles that has made Hamburg the great commercial center that it is, with the advantage that while Hamburg is a port on the North sea Marseilles Is on the warm Mediterranean, and in close connection connec-tion with all her ports and the countries behind those ports, and the more distant countries that trade with southern Europe. The great advantage of a free port is that merchandise can be brought into it free of duty; stored in its warehouses; repacked or mixed, and then as niarket conditions dictate sent to interior manufacturing towns or to foreign countries. In free ports foreign merchants can maintain sample or consignment stocks, and the harrassing control con-trol of custom house officers is mostly eliminated. elim-inated. One feature of this canal connecting Marseilles with Aries, which should not be lost sight of in Utah, is that its construction was more due to the work of the chamber of commerce of Marseilles than any other one factor. When the business men of a city are organized organ-ized and work together, keeping in mind that the more advantages secured for the workers outside and around a city the greater is the return to the city, the final result is sure to an advantage to the city itself. Then progress always follows. |