Checking the Waste

M >> Mary Huston Gregory >> Checking the Waste

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17

In order to encourage railroad building and develop new regions, the
government has given land and money to the extent of hundreds of
millions of dollars, until now the railroads form one-seventh of all our
national wealth, having 228,000 miles of tracks and earning
$2,500,000,000 each year, while the waterways owned by the government
have fallen into disuse.

Within the last four or five years another change has come about in the
general attitude toward the waterways. At the time that the crops are
moved in the fall, and when coal is needed for the winter supply, there
are not nearly enough cars in the country to handle the volume of
business, neither are there enough locomotives to move the necessary
cars, nor tracks, nor stations. In short, the railways are entirely
unable to handle the vast products of the country during the busiest
seasons. Many persons in the West have suffered for fuel, and commerce
has been greatly checked by the shortage; and the situation is growing
worse each year as production increases.

James J. Hill estimates that the cost of equipping the railroads to
carry the commerce of the country would be from five to eight billion
dollars. This means a heavy tax on iron and coal and timber as well as
on the labor resources of the country, and it would then be only a
question of time until still further extensions were needed.

With these facts in view, interest in the waterways of the country has
been revived.

It is estimated that it will require five hundred million dollars, or
fifty million dollars a year for ten years completely to improve the
waterways of the country. This is not more than one-tenth of what would
be needed to equip the railroads. The cost of carrying freight by rail
is from four to five times that of carrying it by water.

Much of the heavy freight of the country,--coal, iron, grain and
lumber,--should be carried in this way, in order to reduce freight rates
and so, indirectly, the cost to the people, and further to relieve the
burden on the railways.

The railways, it might be added, would still have a large and increasing
package-freight business, besides the handling of heavy freight in parts
of the country where there are no navigable rivers.

For these reasons it would seem clearly the only wise policy to adopt a
general plan for waterway improvement and carry it into effect at once.
But there are many things to be considered.

Millions of dollars (in all about five hundred and fifty-two millions)
have been spent for the improvement of waterways. Some of it has
resulted in great gain, but a large part of it has been wasted through
lack of an organized plan. Work has been begun and not enough money
appropriated to finish it. In the course of a few years much of the
value of the work is destroyed by the action of the current or by
shifting sands, or if a stretch of river is finished in the most
approved manner, often it is not used much, in some cases actually less
after than before the work was begun, and these things have created a
prejudice against waterway improvements.

The other reason is that in spite of the overcrowding of the railroads,
the traffic on many of our large rivers is steadily growing less. The
Inland Waterways Commission finds as a reason for the decrease, the
relations existing between the railways and the waterways. A railway,
they consider, has two classes of advantages. First, those that come
from natural conditions. A railroad line can be built in any direction
to any part of the country except the extremely mountainous parts, while
a river runs only in a single direction.

If a new region distant from a large water course is opened up, as is
being done rapidly in the West through irrigation and dry farming, the
people are entirely dependent on the railways to develop it, to bring
them all the conveniences of the outside world, and to carry the
products of their land to the market.

Branch lines and switches can be built to factories and warehouses,
while boats can reach only those situated along the water-front.

Another advantage of the railroads is that they bill freight all the way
through, and that freight is much more easily transferred from one road
to another. It is much more difficult and expensive to load and reload
freight from boats and barges on account of the high and low water
stages of the river. This difference amounts to as much as sixty feet in
the Ohio River at Cincinnati. Railways make faster time, and the
distance between two points is usually shorter, though sometimes during
the busy season of the railways the river freight reaches its
destination much sooner.

The other class of reasons relates to the railways themselves, which
have always been in open competition with the waterways, and to gain
traffic for themselves, usually charge lower rates to those points to
which boats also carry freight. In many cases they have bought the
steamboat lines so that rates might be kept up, and then, unable to
operate the two lines as cheaply as one, have abandoned the steamboat
lines.

Another method by which the railroads have driven out the water traffic,
is by charging extremely heavy rates for freight hauled a short distance
to or from boats, making it quite as cheap as well as more convenient to
send freight all the way by rail.

Lastly, railroad warehouses, terminals and machinery for handling
freight are all much better than those of inland steamboat lines, except
at some points on the Great Lakes where the traffic is very heavy.

Some of these disadvantages might be overcome by law. In France, where
the waterways are managed better than in any other country, the law
requires that railroad rates be twenty per cent. higher on all heavy
freight than the rates on the same freight if carried by water, and in
several countries railroad companies are not permitted to own or manage
a steamboat line.

These measures are suggestive of what may be done by law to correct
abuses, but laws alone can not accomplish everything. The rivers belong
to all the people, and every one who wishes may operate steamboat or
barge lines, but before these can become profitable, and before first
class warehouses and machinery are installed, there must appear on the
part of the people a desire to patronize them. The best results are
found in those cases where there is harmony between the railways and the
steamboat lines; those in which the steamboat lines relieve the railways
of much of the heavy freight which they are not able to handle without
greatly increasing their present equipment.

There should be cooeperation on the part of the people. The towns and
cities along the banks of many European rivers provide suitable
terminals, warehouses and wharves with free use of the service. In other
cases this is done by private capital with a charge for use to shippers.
Sometimes it is done by the steamboat companies themselves, but unless
one or the other method is assured all along the river it is not wise
for the government to undertake the improvement of a stream.

Intelligent improvement of the waterways of the United States demands
first that a careful survey of the needs of the whole country be made,
then that a systematic plan be carried out providing for the improvement
of important streams first.

The state and nation should work together, and any work that is begun
should be completed as promptly as possible so that its full benefit may
be realized.

Certain work, such as the improvement of the channel, should be done by
the national government, since the waters belong to the nation; but the
expense of constructing levees or dykes should be borne by the land
owners along the banks, because the land thus protected is greatly
increased in value; or by the state, which gets the return in increased
taxes.

In many instances, the improvement of a stream would be a great benefit
to one state or part of a state, but it would be impossible in many
years to improve all the desirable streams, so that the larger ones of
most general importance must be considered first.

In such cases the improvement is often undertaken by the state. Some
navigable rivers have been thus improved and many canals are the
property of states or of private companies.

Only a few rivers have a steady flow throughout the year at a depth
sufficient to carry large boats. On most streams destructive floods at
certain seasons and low waters at others interfere with navigation
during a considerable part of the year. Most rivers have sand-bars,
sunken rocks or logs in the channel, making the passage of boats
difficult and dangerous. Others are well suited for navigation, except
at points where rapids and falls make it impossible for boats to pass.
The Ohio, the Tennessee, the Missouri and the upper Mississippi abound
in such dangerous places and these should be canalized. It is the
improving of rivers in these ways, dredging harbors to make them safer,
and digging canals to provide a short passage between two bodies of
water, that constitute what is known as the Improvement of Inland
Waters.

If you look at a map showing the navigable streams of the United States
you will see that nearly all of them lie in the eastern part.

The Mississippi is like a great artery with branches extending in all
directions, east and west. The Great Lakes, with their outlet, the St.
Lawrence River, and the many important rivers emptying into the Atlantic
Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, such as the Merrimac, Hudson, Delaware,
Susquehanna, Potomac and Rio Grande, form great highways for all the
commerce of the eastern part of the country, while the Columbia,
Sacramento and Colorado Rivers, with their branches, are the only
navigable streams of any importance west of the Mississippi River
system.

In some places a small portion of land divides two important water
areas, and canals dug through this neck of land change the commercial
routes of the whole world. Such are the Isthmus of Suez, eighty-seven
miles wide, through which a canal was cut that saves a sailing distance
of 3,700 miles from England to India. Only the Isthmus of Panama,
forty-nine miles in width, divides the Atlantic from the Pacific Ocean.
When the canal across this narrow strip is completed, the sailing
distance from New York to San Francisco will be shortened 8,000 miles,
the entire distance around South America.

The Sault Ste. Marie Canal, connecting Lakes Superior and Huron, is only
a little more than a mile and a half long, but it opens up the entire
iron, copper, lumber and wheat resources of the Northwest to cheap water
passage through the other lakes to the manufacturing region of the East.

The Erie Canal, by connecting Lake Erie with the Hudson River from
Buffalo to Albany, New York, makes the only water passage from the Great
Lakes to the ocean that lies within the borders of the United States.

If you will turn to the map again, you will see still other places where
a short canal may open up an entirely new and important water route.
From Chicago to Lockport, Illinois, is only thirty-seven miles, but
Chicago is on Lake Michigan, while Lockport is on the Illinois River, a
branch of the Mississippi. This canal, a large part of which is now in
operation, is a part of the Lakes to Gulf waterway. One plan is to
broaden and deepen the channel so that large vessels may pass, without
unloading, from the Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.

Another proposed canal which would be undertaken largely by individual
states and a part of which is already completed, would afford a safe
inside passage connecting the many bays, channels and navigable rivers
of the Atlantic coast.

Still another proposed measure is the cutting of a canal from the
southern end of Lake Michigan to the western end of Lake Erie at Toledo,
Ohio, to avoid the long haul up Lake Michigan and down Lake Huron again.

The United States now has 25,000 miles of navigable rivers and a nearly
equal mileage of rivers not now navigable but which might be made
commercially important; five great lakes that have a combined length of
1,410 miles, 2,120 miles of operated canals, and 2,500 miles of sounds,
bays and bayous, that might be joined by tidewater canals easily
constructed, less than 1,000 miles long altogether, and making a
continuous passage from New England to the Gulf of Mexico.

In all, our waterways at the present time are 55,000 to 60,000 miles
long, the greatest system in the world, but almost unused.

The most important waterway improvement so far completed, is the Sault
Ste. Marie, or the "Soo" canal which cost $96,000,000. A depth of eight
feet was increased to twenty-one feet. The traffic has risen in sixteen
years from a million and a quarter tons to forty-one and a quarter
million tons.

A large proportion of the United States is not naturally fitted to be
the home of man; at least, it is not fitted to produce his food, and
except on the lofty mountains the reason for this will almost always be
found to be either a lack or an excess of water.

In some parts of the country, there is, as we have seen, little
rainfall. These arid or semi-arid lands must be provided with water for
drinking purposes and for agriculture. The diverting of water courses
into canals and ditches so that water can be carried to these waste
lands is called irrigation.

In other parts of the country where rains are abundant, serious floods
occur every year, often many times in a year. Thousands of acres of
land thus subject to overflow are lost to use. The holding back of these
flood waters in the upper part of the rivers, and so preventing these
overflows, is termed storage of waters.

In still other regions the rainfall is abundant, and the land low-lying.
Large areas are always covered with water. Such lands are called swamps
or bogs, and when drained, they become the richest of agricultural
lands. Irrigation, storage and drainage are the three methods employed
to make waste lands valuable and useful. The land is saved or reclaimed,
so all these methods of balancing and distributing the water supply are
called reclamation.

In general it may be said that irrigation is more generally needed in
the West, storage of flood waters in the central and eastern states, and
drainage in the South.

By thus distributing the rainfall, hundreds of millions of acres have
been or may be reclaimed, and large regions, formerly unfit to inhabit,
have been turned into profitable farms. Three-fourths of one per cent.
of our total rainfall, or two per cent. of all that falls in the West,
is used for irrigating 13,000,000 acres.

There are several methods of irrigation which are adapted to different
regions and different crops. The rice fields of South Carolina,
Georgia, Louisiana and Texas are irrigated by allowing the land to
remain continually flooded to a depth of several inches. When the
irrigation season is over the levees are opened, and the water runs off
rapidly, and the crop is soon ready to be harvested. Tidal rivers are
used to supply water in most cases, but in Texas many flowing wells are
employed for irrigation.

In Florida, where irrigation is used largely for intensive farming,
various means are employed, some of which are also used in the western
and southwestern states. Mechanical pumps, operated by turbine wheels,
pump the water from the rivers if a lift be required. Sometimes the
water is pumped direct to the fields in iron pipes and applied by means
of hydrants and hose, as in a city water system.

Overhead pipe lines are now recognized as the most perfect and
satisfactory form of artificial watering. Two-inch pipes are run over
frames several feet in height. These are arranged in parallel lines all
over the fields about forty feet apart. At intervals of forty feet, a
small iron pipe, ending with a fine spraying attachment, extends upward.
The water is turned on in the evening and comes out of the sprayer in a
fine mist and falls upon the plants like a gentle rain.

By another form of irrigation, the fields are divided at regular
intervals by wide wooden troughs from which water is directed between
the rows of plants. Main canals leading from the streams and intersected
by short canals extend in all directions through the fields and
orchards, and are distributed in various ways. This system is in general
use throughout the arid portions of the West. The methods are said to be
the most scientific and varied in southern California.

When water for irrigation is supplied from wells some underground system
is generally used. One common method is to lay continuous pipes from the
wells all over the fields and distribute from hydrants, plugs and
standpipes.

By still another system, the water is carried below the surface through
pipes which are broken every few inches and laid in beds of charcoal.

In the eastern states irrigation is only employed in dry weather to
increase the yield of vegetable crops. In the arid western region it
transforms what would otherwise be a dreary desert into fertile valleys.

William J. Bryan, speaking at the first Conservation Congress, said,
"Last September, I visited the southern part of Idaho and saw there a
tract that has been recently reclaimed. I had been there before. I had
looked upon these lands as so barren that it seemed as if it were
impossible that they could ever be made useful.

"When I went back this time and found that in three years 1,700,000
acres of land had been reclaimed, that where three years ago nothing but
sage-brush grew, they are now raising seven tons of alfalfa to the acre,
and more than a hundred bushels of oats; when I found that ten thousand
people are living on that tract, that in one town that has grown up in
that time there are more than 1,900 inhabitants, and in three banks they
had deposits of over half a million dollars, I had some realization of
the magic power of water when applied to these desert lands."

The same thing might be said of other regions throughout the West. In
the Salton district of California a marvelous change has been brought
about by irrigation. A few years ago that was one of the most desolate
and forbidding regions on our continent. Now it is covered with several
thousands of acres of alfalfa and other crops, and it bids fair to be a
great fruit region. Of southern California it is said, "The irrigation
systems of this part of the state are known all over the world, and have
created a prosperous commonwealth in a region which would be a scene of
utter desolation without them."

This locality presents a better opportunity for the scientific study of
farming by irrigation than exists anywhere else in the world. Here all
land values depend directly on ability to obtain a water supply. So
precious is the water and so abundant are the rewards that follow its
application to the soil that the most careful consideration is given to
the various sources of supply and distribution.

As land becomes scarcer and the cost of living greater on account of the
increase in population, men are turning more and more to irrigation to
solve the problem of food supply.

As showing what may be accomplished by irrigation, the report of the
last census says: "The construction of large irrigation works on the
Platte, Yellowstone and Arkansas Rivers would render fertile an area
equal to that of some eastern states. Engineers are grappling with the
great problems of conserving the flood waters of these streams, which
now are wasted and help to increase the destructive floods of the
Mississippi. The solving of these problems will change a vast area of
country, now practically worthless, into valuable farms."

The "Great Bend" country, drained by the Columbia River, contains
several million acres of land which only requires water to make it of
great agricultural value.

The Gila River basin contains more than 10,000,000 acres of fertile
land, capable of producing immense crops if irrigated, but without
irrigation it is a desert land where only sage-brush and cactus
flourish.

From arid lands capable of producing excellent crops but lacking in the
magical element of water, we pass to the consideration of lands where
the richest of soils are shut off from productiveness because they are
covered with water. On the lower Mississippi the soil is richer than in
any other part of the United States, but much of it is overflowed so
frequently that it is unfit for cultivation. Dykes and levees have
reclaimed thousands of acres of such overflow land. Many states control
large marshy sections that have been or may be reclaimed.

In southern Florida lie the Everglades, a vast country which has been
worse than valueless; a malarial region abounding in alligators,
rattlesnakes, scorpions and other dangerous animals and insects. The
state of Florida has undertaken the work of draining this great swamp,
and when the task is completed, Florida will have added to its resources
3,000,000 acres of the richest soil for the raising of winter vegetables
and fruits.

Florida is engaged in another great project--the digging of an inside
passage connecting its inland tidal waters by a canal system which will
open to navigation a continuous inland waterway six hundred miles in
length. In digging these canals through the marshes bordering the
coast, thousands of acres of exceedingly fertile land have been
reclaimed and are now producing valuable crops.

The Kankakee marshes in Indiana have been drained, adding many thousands
of acres of rich soil to the agricultural area of the state.

In all, about 80,000,000 acres are so wet that they must be drained in
order to make them produce good farm crops, but which, while now covered
only with marsh grass or undergrowth, is capable of being made the most
fertile of all land.

This swamp land is ten times the area of Holland, which supports a
population of 5,000,000 people. It is therefore easy to see how greatly
we may add to our productive territory and our national wealth by
reclamation through drainage.

We now come to the use of water as power; and although in the last fifty
years this subject has received little attention, as manufacturing
increases and as fuel decreases and becomes higher, the value of water
becomes more evident, and water-power sites are being eagerly sought.

Our age may come to be known in the future as the age of power, because
through the application of mechanical power man has gained such
marvelous control over the world about him. Wind and water led in the
production of power until about 1870, since which time they have
scarcely increased at all, the greater advantages of steam and
electricity having driven them out.

As long as all factories had to be built by the side of streams having
suitable water-power, the number and size of factories were always
extremely limited. With the introduction of steam it became possible to
build factories at mines, in forests, in fruit or grain regions,
wherever the supply of raw material was plentiful, and to multiply
factories of all kinds in cities near the markets for their product, or
where labor was cheap and abundant. But power could only be used where
it was developed, and the size of the power plant depended on the amount
of business done by each individual user.

Now a new era of power has again enlarged the possibilities of
manufacturing. By means of electricity the work, not only of factories,
but also of the home and the farm may be done in any place where
electricity can be installed. We must bear in mind that electricity is
never a source of power, but is only the agent that carries power to the
user. The source of all electric power is either steam or water,
produced by water-wheels, turbines, steam-engines or gas-engines. The
economical way to furnish electric power is to establish central power
plants, and electricity may be conveyed from them for many miles. An
electric railway, telegraph, or telephone system many miles in length
is operated from a single power plant. Electric light and power are
transmitted all over the largest cities. It is no longer necessary that
a factory be of any specified size nor that it have any waste power. If
it be within reach of the electrical current it may use as much or as
little as is needed.

The cheapness of electric power must always depend on nearness to the
source of supply or to the market. Until a short time ago it was
customary to locate electric power-houses near the market, that is, in
cities. But the benefits to be derived from having the electric plant
near the source of power, so that the cost of production is greatly
lessened, are becoming better recognized. This will make water-power
increasingly valuable.

It is even now practicable to develop water-power, wherever located, for
the production of electricity. Although the lowest grade coals are used
for electric power at the mines yet they can now be used for still other
purposes. Coal or other fuel once used can not be replaced, but when
electricity is derived from water-power only energy otherwise wasted is
used. This energy, if derived from water-power, is all added to our
assets instead of being lost.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17