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Show any country in the world. The combination of its coastal waterways, going around more than half of its perimeter, and its waterways penetrat- ing thousands of miles inland, is potentially the world's greatest system. A highly developed transportation system is an essential part of our industrial progress and the achievement of high living standards. The growth of our domestic waterway commerce has been proportionately less than that of other forms of transportation. The Federal expenditures for improved waterways, while considerable, have been proportionately less than the expenditures from all sources for other transportation facilities. Development of Our Waterways In the early days of the Nation, our rivers and harbors were used mostly in their natural state, aided by removal of obstructions, limited dredg- ing, establishment of light stations, beacons, etc. This work was performed by local private and public interests and, for military purposes, by the Army and Navy. Total expenditures for rivers and harbors, up to the close of the Civil War, were $14,695,193, an average of less than $350,- 000 a year. During the great era of railroad building, from 1866 to 1900, inclusive, in which investment in railroads reached 10 billion dollars, the total excpenses for river and harbor improve- ment were only 342 million dollars. The greatest portion of the expenditures was for harbors and channels along the seacoasts and Great Lakes. Commerce on our inland rivers and canals, which played so large a part in the early de- velopment of the Mississippi Valley and the trade between the seacoasts and the interior, almost disappeared as faster and more dependable rail transportation became available, and as the rail- roads followed the policy of cutting rates along the waterw ays to whatever extent was necessary to take the traffic from the water carriers. An insistent public demand in the United States for waterway improvements and a revival of domestic waterway commerce, both coastal and inland, has developed in the present century from a serLes of underlying causes. Great dis- satisfaction had arisen during the latter part of the nineteenth century because of high and op- pressive railroad rates, unjust discriminations, and unsatisfactory service. This led to Federal regu- lation of railroad rates and services by the Act to Regulate Commerce, which was passed in 1887. This act did not take practical effect until 1906, when it was amended to forbid rebates and give the Interstate Commerce Commission power to fix reasonable maximum and nondiscriminatory rates. From the beginning, railroads have main- tained subnormally low rates wherever necessary to compete with water lines. But the power of the railroads to destroy water commerce by such means as secret rebating and rate-cutting without proper notice to interested users was made unlawful. Interest in the restoration of inland water com- merce had begun to grow in the late nineteenth century. This interest was greatly augmented by price changes during and following World War I which raised railroad costs and rate levels much more sharply than those of water lines. For some years prior to World War I, the cheapness of water transportation of bulk freight on the Great Lakes and along the seacoasts had created some demand for channel improvements on the Ohio and its tributaries and the lower Mississippi. Steel and coal producers in the Pittsburgh area had demonstrated the cheapness of barge trans- portation of coal on the Monongahela, Kanawha, and upper Ohio, especially in canalized portions. This was followed by Federal Government op- eration, as a war measure, of towboats and barges on the Mississippi River between St. Louis and the Gulf. The Panama Canal was opened to com- merce. The high levels of railroad rates follow- ing World War I and the lower-cost transporta- tion on the ocean, lakes, and improved river channels caused marked shifts of industry and trade, and emphasized the great advantages of using the waterways for freight adapted to water transport. From these circumstances and a de- sire for lower freight rates grew the demands for improvement of the internal waterways of the country. Old waterway projects were reconsid- ered ; a number of new ones were adopted; annual 198 |