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Show dock-side handling and storage of chemicals, both liquid and solid, have not been developed to the extent that barges and ships have been designed for special hauls. These factors, and others affecting the over-all con- venience and completeness of service, tend to restrict barge-adapted freight to large volume items. The compensating advantage of the inland and intra- coastal waterways is the inherently low freight cost of water transportation. The competitive costs and invest- ment factors for each individual commodity movement are considered in the selection of the economic method of transportation. This company is chiefly interested in the use of water- ways to transport raw materials which originate near the waterways and to handle large volumes of chemical inter- mediates between two manufacturing plants. At the present time the major raw materials received by du Pont plants along inland waterways are coal from West Vir- ginia, fuel oil from Delaware River refineries, benzene from Pittsburgh, and sulfur from Texas. The major movements of intermediates are the distribution of methanol from an operation in Texas and of sulfuric acid from a Delaware River plant. III. Waterways as Free Public Highways The development of present Government policy with respect to waterways can be traced back to the first days of the Republic. Both the assumption of river and harbor development by the Federal Government and the treat- ment of waterways as free public highways found expres- sion as early as the 1780's. Article 4 of the Ordinance of 1787 for the Government of the Northwest Territory stated: The navigable waterways leading into the Mississippi and St. Lawrence, and the carrying places between the same, shall be common highways, and forever free, as well to the inhabitants of the said territory as to the citizens of the United States, and those of any other States that may be admitted into the confederacy, without any tax, impost, or duty therefor. River and harbor development was foreshadowed by a congressional act passed in 1789 authorizing the Federal Treasury to assume the costs of the lighthouses, beacons, buoys, and public piers that had been erected by the Colonial Government. It assumed major program stature in the early nineteenth century with Federal sub- sidies and grants of land to States to aid in canal con- struction and river improvements, and more important, with the river and harbor acts, beginning with 1824, which provided for direct Federal activity under the direction of the Army Engineers. Statements of Government objectives in waterway de- velopment seldom have found their way into the river and harbor legislation which, since 1824, has become an annual congressional fixture. The no-toll policy was re- affirmed in the Act of July 5, 1884, as amended by Act of March 3,1909, which said: No tolls or operating charges whatever shall be levied upon or collected from any vessel, dredge, or other water craft for passing through any lock, canal, canalized river, or other work for the use and benefit of navigation, now belonging to the United States or that may be hereafter constructed. Rivers and harbor acts have been almost exclusively concerned with authorizing works of improvement of specified rivers and harbors in accordance with reports previously submitted by the Chief of Engineers. The predominant purpose of the legislation, although seldom clearly defined, can, however, be summed up as the encouragement and development of water transporta- tion as a means of promoting the commerce of the United States. Aside from river and harbor legislation, promotion of domestic water navigation projects has been encouraged through the establishment of the TVA and through con- cern with the navigation aspects of multipurpose projects by other Government agencies. Public Law No. 185, Sixty-eighth Congress, approved June 3, 1924, established the Inland Waterways Corpora- tion for the general objective "of carrying on the opera- tions of the Government-owned inland canal, and coast- wise waterways system to the point where the system can be transferred to private operation to the best advan- tage of the Government, of carrying out the mandates of Congress prescribed in section 201 of the Transportation Act of 1920, as amended, and of carrying out the policy enunciated by Congress in the first paragraph of section 500 of such act." The newly formed corporation was the outgrowth of Government operation of waterway serv- ices during World War I to aid in meeting the abnormal wartime demand for transportation. The Transportation Act of 1920 shifted the administration of waterway activ- ity from the Railroad Administration to the Inland and Coastwise Waterways Service under the direction of the Secretary of War until enactment of the Inland Water- ways Corporation Act. In 1939, the Inland Waterways Corporation was transferred from the War Department to the Department of Commerce. In 1937, Congress granted authority to extend barge- line services to include the Savannah River. However, this extension was never made. In the historic policy statement of the 1940 act, Con- gress proclaimed the national transportation policy to be "to provide for fair and impartial regulation of all modes of transportation subject to the provisions of this act, so administered as to recognize and preserve the inherent advantages of each; to promote safe, adequate, economical, and efficient service and foster sound economic conditions in transportation and among the several carriers; to encourage the establishment and maintenance of reason- able charges for transportation services, without unjust discriminations, undue preferences or advantages, or un- fair or destructive competitive practices, * * * all 431 |
