The National Convention of the American Cheap Transportation Association (Paperback) | Released: 23 Sep 2018

Excerpt from The National Convention of the American Cheap Transportation Association: Held at Lyceum Hall, Washington, D. C., January 14th, 1874

Another class, who profess to be highly scientific, have 'a great deal to say about natural channels of emigration and commerce, and certain parallels of latitude, along which they flow just as naturally as water runs down hill. This may be all very well but it does not satisfy the minds of practical men. They want something more reconcilable with the dictates of common sense. They know that there are no natural channels of trade or emigration any more than there are natural railroads or ships or steamboats - that the trade goes where it can be made most profitable, and the emigrant where he can find the most com fortable home and the largest remuneration for his labor. The trade and the emigrant both seek the West and go by that route which will take them cheapest, else why do they not land at Boston or at Portland instead of passing these places and going to New York? The solution of the question may be found in two words, cheap transportation. This furnishes the key to the whole mystery. It is well known that the old road wagon is the most expensive mode of transportation in common use; the hext, railroads, and the cheapest, water. Although it is perhaps a little more difficult to get at the precise difference be, tween the three. The late Commodore M. F. Maury, gives the difference as follows: Railroad transportation five hundred per cent. Cheaper that by road wagon by free canal six hundred per cent. Cheaper than by rail and by river seven hundred and fifty per cent. Cheaper, making an extreme difi'erence of seven hundred and fifty per cent. In favor of the cheapest inland transportation by water. This estimate is based upon an actual comparison of lines operated in different parts of the country. Recent experiments on the Erie canal show that a ton of freight can be moved over that line in the old fashioned horse-boat at five and one-half mills per mile, including State tolls, and that it is possible to transport a ton of freight over a railroad, like the New York Central, with grades of only twenty feet to the mile, for nine and one-half mills per mile. This would still leave a difference of about one hundred per cent. In favor of the canal. But when we bear in mind the fact that very few and perhaps no railroads can be built between the W'est and the Atlantic with grades so low, and when we re member also the many other conditions involved in this reduction to nine and one-half mills, we are satisfied that the actual per cent. Of difference must be still greater. But the same experiment (above alluded to) demonstrates the feasibility of using steam as a motive power on canals, and the first application of it has resulted in a reduction of sixty-five per cent. On the present 'cost of transporta tion, making the actual difference between the canal and this railroad possibility something over four hundred per cent. Competition cannot alter these figures nor can legislative enactments change them. They must remain as now until some mode of operating railroads at less expense be found - and this would doubtless be the case with canals as well. The people of the West understand this question of water transportation very well, and the people of the other parts of the country are beginning to wake up to the fact that the development of their interests depends upon cheap food. And consequently a freer and cheaper inter course with our brethren of the West.

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