RELATION OF XATIO'AL GOTERXMENT 
 TO DOMESTIC COMMERCE 
 
 SPEECH 
 
 OF 
 
 HON. GEORGE F. HOAR 
 
 IN THE 
 
 SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, 
 
 Tuesday, July 1, 1884. 
 
 WASHINGTON. 
 1 e 4 . 
 
Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library 
 Gift of Seymour B. Durst Old York Library 
 
SPEECH 
 
 OF 
 
 HON. GEOEGE F. HOAE. 
 
 The Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, having under consideration the bill 
 <H. R. 7012) making appropriations for the construction, repair, and preservation 
 of certain public works on rivers and harbors, and for other purposes — 
 
 Mr. HOAR said: 
 
 Mr, Peesidext: I wish to express my views of the relation of the 
 National Government to domestic commerce. 
 
 I am one of those persons who believe the powers conferred by the 
 people on the National Government were created to be exercised. There 
 is no economy in wasting strength. Nothing is so extravagant as suf- 
 fering great public properties to remain unused. Great as have been 
 the achievements of the American people in developing the resources of 
 this continent for the use of man, there are far greater resources still 
 unused, which the power of the nation alone is adequate to unfold. 
 Nothing stands in the way of our contesting again with Great Britain 
 her supremacy on the sea. of taking our rightfal and leading place in 
 supplying the markets of the world as well as bringing together the 
 distant parts of our own territory, and multiplying many fold our agri- 
 cultural and mineral wealth, but the want of a discreet and liberal 
 exercise of the powers vested in Congress for this very purpose. 
 
 There are two difficulties which we encounter. The first is from 
 that school of statesmanship which dreads and resists every exercise of 
 the functions of government not absolutely necessary for the preserva- 
 tion of the state and the security of life and property. The other is 
 from a widespread popular belief that this class of expenditures is dis- 
 honestly made. But the theory of the strict constructionist, however 
 it may be vindicated by experience, in regard to many of the relations 
 of government to the people is surely out of place here. Government 
 has its police powers: it exercises its authority for restraint or for 
 exaction over the individual human will. The use of such powers 
 should be confined to the limits of absolute necessity. They become 
 odious to those who are subjected to them. They are the instru- 
 ments of tyranny and the temptation of ambition. Let these powers 
 be limited by a construction as strict as may be compatible with the 
 absolute safety of the state. The maxim the world is governed too 
 much" is the witness of the experience of mankind of their abuse. 
 
 But to the power to regulate commerce no such objection applies. 
 It is wholly beneficent. It is a senseless and unreasoning fear which 
 dreads putting forth the national strength in these great public works 
 through which every artery and vein of commerce throbs with a new 
 life. Surely if we can call the great inanimate forces of nature into the 
 service of man we may rightfully avail ourselves of the united strength 
 of the 50,000,000 who make up the Republic to build great public ways, 
 
4 
 
 to aid the railroad, to open the harbor on lake or ocean, to clear the 
 channel of thp great river for the commerce of the world. Under this 
 generous and wise policy taxation itself, everywhere else a burden, 
 becomes only a source of wealth. The agencies of destruction are turned 
 to the protection of works enduring as the continent itself. The great 
 engineers of the Army, relieved from the employments of war, turn 
 their genius in a new direction — 
 
 Bid the broad arch the dangerous flood contain 
 The mole, projected, break the roaring main ; 
 Back to his bounds their subject sea command, 
 And roll obedient rivers through the land — 
 These honors Peace to happy nations bringfs ; 
 These are imperial arts, and worthy kings. 
 
 If any construction of the Constitution can be considered as settled 
 by legislative precedent, by general consent, and by the opinions of the 
 great leaders and authorities of all parties, it is this: That the power 
 to regulate commerce among the States has been vested by the Consti- 
 tution in Congress as completely as it before existed in the States; that 
 it includes the power to facilitate commerce by all appropriate public 
 works ; and that it is a power granted not for purposes of limitation or 
 restraint, but as a beneficial power to be freely exercised. Mr. Calhoun, 
 of all our statesmen the most jealous of national authority, declares in 
 his report of June 26, 1846: 
 
 It was not to limit or prohibit it as a power of a dangerous character. On the 
 contrary, it was regarded as one of the utmost utility, and on the proper control 
 of which the prosperity of the States essentially depended. 
 
 Mr. President, it is not from constitutional scruple that we hesitate to 
 employ for the public advantage the beneficent forces which the Con- 
 stitution places in our hands. It is the fear of a wild and unreason- 
 ing public outcry. I state the result of careful observation and of large 
 experience in legislation here when I affirm my belief that Congress 
 has not dared to deal with the question of restoring our carrying trade 
 by sea, with the question of creMing and maintaining a navy, or with 
 this matter of developing our great internal public ways in the spirit 
 of a true ^visdom or a true economy. ^Ye have not only not dealt with 
 them as other great nations deal with them, but we have not dealt with 
 them on sound principles, as a private man with like interests and 
 resources would deal with them. 
 
 Mr. Webster declared in 1824: 
 
 High rank among the nations results more than from anything else from that 
 military power which we can cause to be water-borne, and from that extent of 
 commerce which we are able to maintain throughout the world. (See Webster, 
 volume 3, page 134.) 
 
 The United States, with its 18,000 miles of seacoast, is no longer 
 a naval power. Yotir flag carries with it no terror at sea, for you 
 have neither guns nor ships of war to support it. You are not only 
 without the means of making yourselves formidable by attack, but 
 you could not without a long period of preparation defend your own 
 coasts. It is not England or France, Italy or Spain onlj; with whom 
 you are bound over by your own weakness to keep the peace. You 
 could not if you would have supported the policy of the last Secretary 
 of State in regard to the American continent. It is doubtful if you had 
 the naval force to prevent Chili from laying San Francisco under con- 
 tribution in case she had resented our interference. 
 
 An eminent naval officer was called on to respond to the toast to the 
 
5 
 
 Navy at the meeting of the Army of the Potomac in this city last sum- 
 mer. I do not envy him if the report I have seen of his speech be true, 
 as I have no reason to doubt, when he was compelled to answer the 
 suggestion that we must depend on torpedoes and not on sailors for the 
 safety of our chief cities. 
 
 Rear-Admiral Eodgers. responding to the third toast. " The Na%-y,'" alluded to 
 the co-operation of the naval with the land forces during the war. Speaking of 
 the Navy of to-day, he said : 
 
 " So far as I know we have not even one good gun of modern caliber ashore 
 or afloat, in the Army or the Xavy. ^yhat is more, I fear we have no trained 
 artisans nor any forges to make guns. Our old cannon are as obsolete as the 
 flint-lock muskets of 1812, and we have not one efficient ship of war. England 
 is at this moment building twelve great ironclads, France sixteen, and the Ital- 
 ians two of the largest ironclads in the world, and we. in this rich country, with 
 its enormous seacoasts, have been standing idle."" 
 
 General Rosecraxs. who sat near the speaker, suggested that this country de- 
 pended on torpedoes. Admiral Rodgers immediately took issue with him, and 
 said that while torpedoes were not implements of warfare to be disregarded, 
 they were an utterly unreliable power, and their greatest value is in their 
 moral effect. 
 
 Mr. Webster declared at Charleston in June, 18'25: 
 
 "SVe have a commerce that leaves no sea unexplored ; navies which take no 
 law from superior force. 
 
 Is this true of our 50,000,000 to-day? 
 
 The delusion that the absence of American shipping from the ocean is 
 due to the rebel cruisers and the encouragement of rebel cruisers by Great 
 Britain in refuted by statistics. In 186S. four years after the Alabama 
 went down in the British Channel, the American registered tonnage was 
 1,565,732; in 1682 it had fallen to 1.292/294; a loss of 273.438. In 
 1858 the registered steam tonnage was (American) 221.939: in 1882, 
 154,570; a loss of 67,369. 
 
 The percentage of American, British, and total foreign tonnage en- 
 tered at seaports of the United States from foreign countries was: 
 
 
 1S6S. 
 
 1882. 
 
 Difference. 
 
 
 Per cent. 
 44.26 
 42. 15 
 55. 74 
 
 Per cent. 
 20. 25 
 .52. 40 
 79. 75 
 
 Per cent. 
 24.01 
 
 British 
 
 Foreign 
 
 
 
 
 In 1856 the American percentage was 71.56: in 1861. 66.35: in 1882, 
 20.25. 
 
 The secretary of the National Board of Trade, from whom these sta- 
 tistics are taken, well says: 
 
 A few years hence, unless adequate measures of relief shall be promptly ap- 
 plied, we shall have no carrying trade whatever upon any ocean; on the At- 
 lantic we can hardly be said to have any now. 
 
 Great Britain owes the establishment and maintenance of her ocean 
 steamship lines to a liberal system of subsidies. Even now when her 
 great steamship lines are established in their command of the world's 
 carrying trade she pays out for ocean mail service a considerable sum 
 annually more than she receives in postage. 
 
 I do not fail to appreciate the gravity of other objections to a system 
 of subsidies, nor do I deem it for the interest of the United States to 
 maintain a large navy. Still less would I put myself in opposition to 
 that wise and healthy public sentiment which demands a rigid economy 
 
6 
 
 in expenditure. No dollar of the public money should be taken from 
 the Treasury unle-ss for a purpose which would command the assent of 
 the people when the facts and reasons were known. But the American 
 people are entitled to have their great business interests dealt with by 
 statesmen who are not constantly flinching and cringing; who are not 
 afraid that their public and pei-sonal character can not stand against 
 "senseless imputations of dishonesty. If the Congress be a den of thieves 
 let us abandon our Constitution. Certainly the Republic is a failure 
 if it can not wield those national forces which are solely peacef ul and 
 beneficial because of the iniquity and corruption which must attend 
 their exercise. 
 
 Who can doubt that a sovereign like the half-savage Peter the Great 
 or like the accomplished Emperor of Brazil would largely iucrease the 
 value of our product to the producer and reduce its cost to the con- 
 sumer by moderate and judicious expenditure in removing the obstruc- 
 tions to transportation? What I complain of is not that we do not 
 adopt the methods of other nations. Our own may be better, I do 
 not now complain that we do not imitate Great Britain in the policy 
 by which she has gained and preserved the sovereignty of the seas. I 
 do not now complain that we do not create a navy. I am not at this 
 moment complaining that we have neglected the lessons of our own 
 experience and the conclusions of our wisest and most thorough inves- 
 tigators. But I demand that we shall consider all these things on 
 their merits; that we shall treat them and discuss them and vote upon 
 them as things that may be honestly done or honestly let alone. I 
 would insert in the river and harbor bill no single item, the public 
 usefulness of which can not be made so clear in the report of the com- 
 mittee that it will command with substantial unanimity the support 
 of those persons who will fairly and consistently give it their atten- 
 tion. If the American Congress shall be driven from its duty by fear 
 of imputations upon its integrity it will go far toward a confession 
 that such imputations are not undeserved. 
 
 We are a great producing and a great consuming country. We are 
 not only great producers of raw material, but are and ought to be great 
 manufacturers. While we aspire to our full share of the occupation of 
 carrying for other nations this shiire will always be of far less impor- 
 tance than the carrying we do for ourselves. It is manifestly for our 
 interest that our product should be of the greatest possible value to 
 the producer and of the lowest possible cost to the consumer. In so 
 far as we are ourselves consumers this is plainly true. It is equally 
 true so far as we provide for the consumption of other nations. It is 
 essential to our successful competition with other nations either as 
 manufacturers or as producers of food that we should reduce very largely 
 the cost of our product. There are two policies proposed for the accom- 
 plishment of this result. One is the reduction of wages. The other 
 the reduction of the cost of transportation. 
 
 The reduction of wages whether on farm or in factory is wholly in- 
 admissible. Upon their maintenance and increase depend not only 
 the comfort of unnumbered American homes but, as I firmly believe, 
 the destiny of the Republic itself. I wdll not accept the teachings of 
 that political economy which would persuade me that the fate of the 
 workingman everywhere is to toil for bare life. I shall despair of my 
 country when I am compelled to believe in such a necessity. Comfort- 
 able homes, abundant food, education, leisure must be earned by the 
 
7 
 
 workingmen in whom Providence has vested the government of this 
 country or it V7ill perish. 
 
 The cost of transportation adds nothing to intrinsic value. It is pure 
 tax. It is burden,, and nothing but burden. Any course of legisla- 
 tion, any reasonable expenditure which tends to reduce or to annihi- 
 late it is wholly beneficial. So far as we can institute a policy which 
 shall annihilate the great spaces of the country we inhabit we take- 
 from our chief rival, Great Britain, the advantage of her station on the 
 sea. Surpassing her in everything else, compelling her to depend on us 
 for lood and for cotton, if we can make as nearly as possible our whole 
 territory a seaboard by the improvement of our great and wonderful 
 opportunities for internal water transportation, we can reduce her both, 
 in commerce and business future to a second rank. 
 
 The removal of the burden of the cost of transportation of food and, 
 material, important as it is to the rest of the country, is ^^tal to New 
 England, and especially to the State which I represent. She has to- 
 transport over vast spaces her food, her material, and her product. 
 Bringing across the continent her food, her coal, her iron, her leather, 
 her wool, and her cotton, she sends her product back across the con- 
 tinent to be sold in competition with the established iodnstries and 
 cheap labor of Europe on the one hand, and the rising home manufacture 
 of the West and South on the other. Boston, of all the five great ports 
 of export, is the farthest in distance from the producer. New England 
 is the farthest in distance from the market of all the great manufacturing 
 centers. The interest of New England is to make the percentage of 
 the cost of transport on food and material and product as small as poS' 
 sible. That alone can give her equality. 
 
 The doctrine of internal improvement is a Massachusetts doctrine. 
 She originated it. She has furnished its ablest and most zealous de- 
 fenders. In a letter dated February 2, 1837, John Quincy Adams says: 
 
 The great effort of my administration was to mature into a permanent and 
 regular system the application of all the superfluous revenue of the Union to in- 
 ternal improvement; improvement which at this day would have afforded 
 high wages and constant employment to hundreds of thousands of laborers and 
 in which every dollar expended would have repaid itself fourfold in the en- 
 hanced value of the public lands. With this system in ten years from this day 
 the surface of the whole Union would have been checkered over with railroads 
 and canals. It may still be done, half a century later, and with the limping gait 
 of State legislation and private adventure. I would have done it in the admin- 
 istration of the affairs of the nation ; I had laid the foundation of it all by a reso- 
 lution offered to the Senate in 1806, and adopted by that body under another's 
 name. The Journals of the Senate are my vouchers. It called forth the first 
 report of Albert Gallatin, then Secretary of the Treasury, upon internal im- 
 provement. 
 
 This report of Albert Gallatin was made to the Senate on the 4th of 
 • April, 1808. Few of our state papers equal it in interest and impor- 
 tance. It embodies the opinions of .John Quincy Adams, as he repeat- 
 edly declared. Gallatin's own authority is hardly inferior to that of 
 Adams. 
 
 I give a brief abstract of Mr. Gallatin's report, which shows its far- 
 reaching character: 
 
 Whenever the annual expense of transportation on a certain route in its nat- 
 ural state exceeds the interest on the capital employed in improving the com- 
 munication and the annual expense of transportation (exclusively of the tolls) by 
 the improved route, the difference is an annual additional income to the nation — 
 
 It makes no difference whether the tolls pay the interest on the cost 
 or not — 
 
 Tue general gain is not confined to the difference between the expenses of 
 
8 
 
 the transportation of those articles which had formerly been conveyed by that 
 route, but many which were brought to market by other channers wilf then 
 find a new and more advantageous direction: and those which on account of 
 their distance or weight could not be transported in any manner whatever, will 
 acquire a value and become a clear addition to the national wealth. 
 
 Private capital will uot answer. 
 
 First. Capital is so in demand that it is not readily subscribed to ob- 
 jects whose profit is remote. Less sums than needed being sul)scribed 
 at first, work proceeds slowly and interest lost 
 
 Second. One canal comparatively- useless until others l)eyond com- 
 pleted too extensive or distant to be embraced by the same individuals. 
 
 The General Government alone can remove these obstacles, and thereby 
 reduce expense to the lowest rate. 
 
 Good roads and canals chief strengtheners of the Union. 
 
 RECOMMEXD.\TIOXS. 
 
 First. A series of great canals along the Atlantic coast completing 
 a tide- water inland navigation from Boston to Saint Mary's, Ga., then 
 the southeastern extremity of the territory of the United States. 
 
 Second. Communication between Atlantic and Western rivers. 
 
 Four artificial roads. 
 
 Improvement of navigation of Atlantic rivers by canals, &c. 
 Louisville Canal. 
 
 Also, in future canal from Mississippi River to Atlantic, cost, $10,- 
 000,000. 
 
 Third. Communications between Atlantic rivers and Saint Lawrence 
 and lakes. 
 
 Fourth. Interior canals. 
 
 Fifth. Turnpike and artificial roads. 
 
 Mr. Gallatin estimates the cost of all these works, which he deems 
 "of national and first-rate importance " and which he says ''seem in 
 the first instance to claim the support of the General Government, at 
 $20,000,000. This does not include the cost of a canal from the Mis- 
 sissippi River to the Atlantic to be accomnlished later at an estimated 
 cost of $10,000,000. 
 
 In view of the ferocity of some modern criticisms, it is interesting to 
 read the following suggestions from Mr. Jefferson's great financial sec- 
 retary: 
 
 The great geographical features of the country have been solely adhered to in 
 pointing out those lines of communication ; and these appear to embrace all the 
 great interests of the Union and to be calculated to diffuse and increase the na- 
 tional wealth in a very genei-al way by opening an intercourse Ijetween the 
 remotest extremes of the United States. Yet it must necessarilj- result from an 
 adherence to that principle that tho.se partsof the Atlantic States through which 
 the great Western and Xorthwestern communications will be carried must, in 
 addition to the general advantages in which they will participate, receive from 
 tho.se communications gi-eater local and immediate benefits than the Eastern, 
 and perhaps Southern States. As the expense must be defrayed from the gen- 
 eral funds of the Union, justice, and perhaps policy not less than justice, seem 
 to require that a number of local improvements, sufficient to eqiuilize the ad- 
 vantages, should also be undertaken in those States, parts of States, or districts 
 which are less immediatelj' interested in those inland communications. Arith- 
 metical precision can not, indeed, be obtained in objects of that kind : nor would 
 an apportionment of the moneys applied according to the population of each 
 State be either just or practicable, since roads, and particularly canals, are often 
 of greater utility to the States which they unite than to those through which 
 they pass. But a sufficient number of local improvements, consisting either of 
 roads or canals, may, without any material difficulty, be selected so as to do 
 substantial justice and give general satisfaction. Without pretending to sug- 
 gest what would be the additional sum necessary for that object, it will, for the 
 sake of round numbers, be estimated at S3,400,000. 
 
9 
 
 These expenditures which, not including ten millions for the canal 
 from the Mississippi to the Atlantic, amount in all to $-2(^.000,000, Mr. 
 Gallatin proposes to defray by an annual appropriation of 000, 000, 
 extending over a period of ten years. 
 
 Mr. Gallatin estimates the annual permanent revenue of the United 
 States from 1809 to 1815 at fourteen millions, and the necessary annual 
 expenditure on the peace establishment at eight millions and a half, 
 including forty-six hundred thousand for principal and interest of the 
 public debt. 
 
 It will be seen, therefore, that he proposes an expenditure for inter- 
 nal improvements alone, not reckoning any sum devoted to harl)ors 
 either on the ocean or the lakes. e(|ualto 14 per cent, of the entire na- 
 tional income, and equal to about 25 per cent, of the sum expended by 
 the nation for all other purposes, and to more than 50 per cent, of the 
 expenditure for all other purposes, exclusive of the public debt. The 
 actual expenditure fell far short of Mr. Gallatin's estimate, l)eiug but 
 fifty-three hundred and eleven thousand in 1810 for all purposes other 
 than the debt. 
 
 If we were to expend the same proportion of our revenue on this ob- 
 ject to-day, as was proposed by Gallatin in 1808. we should have de- 
 voted fifty-six and a half millions in 1882 to internal improvements 
 alone. 
 
 INIr. Adams repeatedly records in his diary his unchanged opinion 
 upon this question. 
 
 June 25, 1830. he says: 
 
 I have cherished the i)rinciple and the system of internal improvement under 
 a conviction that it was for this nation the only path to increasino^ comfort and 
 well-being, to honor, to glory, and finally to the general improvement of the 
 condition of mankind. This system has had its fiiict nations from the time of 
 the establishment of the present Constitution of the United States. During the 
 administration of Mr. Monroe it was constantly acquiring strength in Congress 
 and in the iniblic opinion. It was then favored by Calhoun and Lowndes, both 
 of whom had hopes of rising upon it. and with them the State of South Carolina 
 was devoted to it. The combination in Congress became by this means so strong 
 that it overpowered the resistance of Mr. Monroe and produced the act of Con- 
 gress of April, 1824. The slaveholders of the South have since discovered that 
 it will operate against their interests. The cause will no doubt survive me, and 
 if the Union is destined to continue it will no doubt ultimately triumph. 
 
 December 20, 1831 : 
 
 On my way home from the House I stopped at the Treasury and had an hour 
 of convei'sation with the Secretary. I told him I should propose to reserve as 
 much as five millions a year to purposes of internal improvement. 
 
 January 6, 1832, conversation with General Adair: 
 
 He spoke with contempt of the mania for internal improvements, which, he 
 said, was a raging disease throughout the country. I said I was much afiected 
 with the disease myself. 
 
 December 22, 1824, conversation with James Barbour: 
 As to internal improvements mj' opinions had been published in most of the 
 newspapers in extracts of letters from me, and had no doubt been seen bj-him. 
 Since the act of Congress establishing the Cum])erland road there had been no 
 constitutional question worth disputing about involved in the discussion. It was 
 certainly a great power to be exercised by Congress, and perhaps liable to great 
 abuses. So were all the other great powers of Congress : and the control over it 
 was in the organization of the Government, the elective franchise, the State au- 
 thorities, and the good sense and firmness of the people. 
 
 December 27, 1831: 
 
 I said I was no worshipper of the tariff, but of internal improvement, for the 
 pursuit of which by Congress as a system I claimed to be the first mover. It 
 was by a resolution which I offered to the Senate of the United States on the 
 23d of February, 1807. 
 
10 
 
 July 30, 1834' 
 
 My own system of administration was to make the national domain the inex- 
 haustible fund for progressing and increasing internal improvement. 
 
 Mr. Adams charges that the slaveholders thought the policy of in- 
 ternal improvement adverse 1x) their interest, and that their opposition 
 caused its failure. But, however this may be, the greatevSt of our early 
 statesmen full}' coincided with his opinions. 
 
 Mr. Clay thought if Congress did not exercise the power there would 
 be a division of the Union by the line of the Alleghany Mountains. 
 
 Mr. Madison did not find in the Ck)nstitution powers as extensive as 
 he thought desirable for the purpose, but eagerlj' urged an amendment 
 of the Constitution to supply the needed authority. 
 
 In his message of December 23, 1811, communicating to Congress the 
 act of the State of New York in reference to the Erie Canal, he says: 
 
 The utility of canal navigation is universally admitted. It is no less certain 
 that scarcely any country offers more extensive opportunities for that branch of 
 improvements than the United States, and none perhaps inducements equally 
 persuasive to make the most of them. The particular undertaking contemplated 
 by the State of New York, which marks an honorable spirit of enterprise and 
 comprises objects of national as well as more limited importance, will secure the 
 attention of Congress to the signal advantages to be derived to the United States 
 from a general system of internal communication.and conveyance, and suggest 
 to their consideration whatever steps may be proper on their part toward its in- 
 troduction and accomplishment. As some of these advantages have an Intimate 
 connection with the arrangements and exertions for the general security, it is at 
 a period calling for these that the merits of such a system will be seen in their 
 strongest lights. 
 
 In his seventh and eighth annual messages Mr. Madison reiterates his urgent 
 desire that Congress shall establish the roads and canals " which can best be ex- 
 ecuted under the national authority." " No objects," he declares, " within the 
 circle of political economy so richly repay the expense bestowed upon them ; 
 there are none the utility of which is more universally ascertained and acknowl- 
 edged; none that more do honor to the Government whose wise and enlarged 
 patriotism duly appreciates them. While the States individually, with a laud- 
 able enterprise and emulation, avail themselves of their local advantages by 
 new roads, by navigable canals, and by improving the streams susceptible of 
 navigation, the General Government is the more urged to similar undertakings, 
 requiring a national jurisdiction and national means, by the prospect of thus 
 systematically completing so excellent a work. And it is a happy reflection 
 that any defect of constitutional authority which may be encountered can be 
 supplied in a mode which the Constitution itself has providently pointed out. 
 
 Mr. Monroe in his first inaugural advocates with great earnestness 
 the completion by national authority of the system of communication 
 for which nature, in the great rivers, i)ays, and lakes, had. done so much. 
 He expresses no doubt of the constitutional authority, unless it be con- 
 veyed by the phrase "proceeding always with a constitutional sanc- 
 tion." He returns to the subject in his last annual message. But in 
 his veto of the Cumberland road bill, on the 4th of May, 1822, he an- 
 nounced his reluctant conclusion that the existing powers of Congress 
 are not sufficient, and recommends an amendment to the Constitution 
 to confer the needed power. 
 
 Mr. Jefferson held like opinions. He thought the defect might be 
 cured by si)ecial legislation by each State confirming the acts of Con- 
 gress for works within its limits, and prepared a form for such enact- 
 ment. In his last annual message he indicates a probable surplus reve- 
 nue of more than $8,000,000, which he proposes shall, instead of being 
 reduced — 
 
 Be appropriated to the improvements of roads, canals, rivers, education, and 
 other great foundations of prosperity and union, under the powers which Con- 
 gress may already possess, or such amendment of the Constitution as may be 
 approved by the States. 
 
11 
 
 When Mr. Gallatin's report was made there was no State in the 
 Union west of the Mississippi. There were but two States. Tennessee 
 and Kentucky, which touched that river on the east. Florida was in 
 the possession of Spain. The entire population of the United States at 
 the last preceding census was but fifty-three hundred thousand, and at 
 the next following but seventy-two hundred thousand. Manufacture 
 was in its infancy. The production of cotton was less than one-seven- 
 tieth its present amount. That of grain, compared with its present 
 product of twelve hundred and fifty million in value, of iron with its 
 present product of five thousand five hundred millions of pounds, of coal 
 with its present product of fifty-nine millions of tons, would probably 
 bear even smaller proportions. As has been already said. Mr. Gallatin 
 expected a revenue of fourteen millions of dollars, atfording a surplus 
 of five and a half millions, a trifling sum w hen compared with our 
 present receipts of $400,000,000. 
 
 Let it be remembered that the expenditure thus proposed by these 
 early statesmen was for internal improvement alone — for rivers, canals, 
 and roads — an expenditure for the service only of domestic commerce, 
 Including nothing for light-houses or harbors on the coast. John Quincy 
 Adams would have had a nation of six or seven million people give 
 five million annually from its revenue of fourteen million. Jefferson 
 would have it give annually eight million from its revenue of eighteen 
 million to the territory east of the ^Mississippi for purposes for which 
 the much-abused bill of 1882 expended exclusive of the Mississippi 
 Eiver but five and a half million from our income of lour hundred 
 million for the entire continent. 
 
 I suppose we may fairly claim that any doctrine upon which, from 
 1806 to 1848, when Adams died, Daniel Webster and John Quincy 
 Adams were agreed was a ^lassachusetts doctrine. 
 
 To exhibit Mr. Webster's views on the iK)licy of liberal expenditure 
 for internal communications by the General Government would be al- 
 most to set forth his whole theorv^ as a constitutional statesman. He 
 ■was born in the last year of the Revolutionary war. His public life 
 began at the beginning of the war of 1812, when the infant Republic, 
 with its population scarcely exceeding 7,000,000, was an object of un- 
 disguised contempt to every leading power on earth. Yet the present 
 greatness of the country is not seen by our own vision to-day more 
 clearly than it appeared then to that of Daniel Webster. With the eye of 
 a prophet and the comprehension of a statesman he saw from the begin- 
 ning the vast and beneficent power of these unused national forces. He 
 never separated from the blessings of constitutional liberty itself the 
 benefits to be derived from commerce as developed by these great national 
 works of internal improvement. He never omits to urge this theme 
 when the occasion makes it proper. 
 
 In his Plymouth Rock address he dwells on this as following the 
 establishment of national government. 
 
 Again, in his speech before the ^Massachusetts election, in 1825, he 
 calls on his fellow-<;itizens, ' * speaking, " as he says, ' ' perhaps at some 
 hazard of misinterpretations, by united counsels and united efforts to 
 aid the West in clearing the navigation of its mighty streams, and the 
 South to push the production and augment the prices of its great 
 staples." 
 
 At the public dinner given him in Faneuil Hall, in 1828, at the out- 
 set of his service in the Senate, he again calls the attention of his con- 
 stituents to this subject as one of great and growing importance. He 
 
12 
 
 showed them that with the close of the war iii Europe the great har- 
 vest which they had reaped as ueutrals was over, other nations were 
 now to raise their own bread, and as far as possible transport their own 
 commodities. It was fit to consider how far home productions could 
 properly be made to furnish activity to home supply and of the highest 
 importance to inquire what means existed of establishing free and cheap 
 intercourse between distant ports, thereby bringing the raw material 
 abounding in one under the action of the productive labor which was 
 found in another. He points out that from the very first asseml)lingof 
 Congress the j)ower to regulate commerce has been construed to com- 
 prehend such measures as were necessary for its support, its improve- 
 ment, its advancement, and justified the expenditure of money for the 
 construction of piers, beacons, and light-houses and the clearing out of 
 harbors. It was not eas}^ to see why like expenditures might not be j us- 
 tified when made on internal objects. 
 
 The vast regions of the West are penetrated by rivers to which those of Eu- 
 rope are but as rills and brooks. The navigation of those noble streams, washing 
 AS they do the margins of one-third of the States of the Union, is obstructed by 
 obstacles capable of being removed, and yet not likely to be removed but by the 
 power of the Genei-al Government, Was this a justifial)le object of expenditure 
 from the National Government? Without hesitation I have thought it was. 
 
 He goes on to urge that these objects are much less local than they 
 seem: 
 
 If the mouths of the Southern rivers be deepened and improved, the neigh- 
 boring cities are benefited, but so also are the ships which %'isit them ; and if the 
 Mississippi and Ohio be rendered more safe for navigation, the great markets 
 of consumption along their shores are the more readily and cheaply approached 
 by the products of the factories and fisheries of New England. 
 
 He renews the subject at New York, and again at Worcester, and 
 again at Pittsburgh, and again at Alliany, and again at Bangor, and 
 again at Madison, Ind. He meets the objection that the advantages 
 received from this policy are local. ' ' In such cases it always appeared 
 to me that the point to be examined was, whether the 2)rinciple was 
 general. If the principle were general, although the ai)plicatiou might 
 be partial, I cheerfully and zealously gave it my support." Mr. Web- 
 ster's speech at the Philadelphia hanquet December 2, 1845, in replj^ to 
 President Polk's message vetoing the river and harbor bill of that year, 
 hardly needs the change of a sentence to adajDt it to the question as it 
 has come up at the present day. 
 
 President Polk had vetoed a bill which appropriated §1,300,000 for 
 river and harbor improvement. Of this but §280, 000 was for works on 
 the Atlantic, leaving more than a million for lake and river. Consid- 
 ering that we were then at war, considering the vast increase in the 
 population, the vast accession of territory, the gigantic development of 
 our internal commerce which has taken place in the last forty years, 
 that sum was a greater sum in proportion to the need or the ability of 
 the country than the expenditure for like objects proposed by any re- 
 cent bill. The arguments that Mr. Webster then combated and over- 
 threw were the same which in infinitely feebler forms have been repro- 
 duced at the present day. The charge that the objects provided for 
 were local, the imputation upon members of Congress as an ofiense that 
 they desired to divide the benefits of this bill among different sections 
 of the country with some regard to equality, even the silly jeers at 
 uncouth and unfamiliar names of rivers and creeks, were rife then as 
 now. Little Sodus Bay and Great Sodus Bay and Conneaut Creek and 
 Ocracoke Inlet wereas unfamiliar to the jjeople in general then as Che- 
 
13 
 
 halis aud Coliansey are to-day. This speech at the Philadelphia din- 
 ner is one of the very greatest of INIr. Webster's loolitical speeches. It 
 never should be and never will be forgotten. Its weighty and compact 
 argument can not with justice be abridged. 
 
 I have elsewhere quoted the magnificent passage in the reply to 
 Hayne, where Mr. Webster demands for himself and for New England 
 the praise of having uniformly supported the most liberal grants from 
 the public Treasury for the improvement of Western rivers. He there 
 claims, as he had claimed in the first speech on Foot's resolution, that 
 everything of this kind that had been accomplished had depended on 
 New England lor its success. It is true of that great speech as it is 
 true of Mr. AVebster's entire public efforts taken as a whole from the 
 beginning of his career that with the exception of his vindication of 
 the supreme authority of the Union, there is no single public object 
 upon which he lays so much stress or for which he manifests such zeal 
 as this of internal improvement. He declares that he had proposed to 
 himself this object of effort at the outset of his Congressional service. 
 He re-enforces his argument from the Constitution by the consideration 
 that the Government is a great untaxed landed x)roprietor. It was with 
 Webster's authority that Sumner silenced the storm of opposition which 
 his first great speech in Congress encountered for which he was threat- 
 ened with legislative censure for advocating the support of internal im- 
 provements in the West by liberal grants of public land. 
 
 Mr. Webster dealt with this subject many times in speeches not found 
 in his collected works. His speech on the purchase of stock in the 
 Louisville Canal is published in the volumes compiled by Mr. Everett 
 under his direction. That is one of the most W^ebsterian of Webster's 
 speeches. There is not a sentence of it that does not seem to bring its 
 great author before our eyes : 
 
 There are no Alleghanies in my politics. I have taken a part in this great 
 struggle for internal improvement from the beginning and I shall hold out to the 
 end. Whoever may follow, or whoever may fly, I shall go straight forward for 
 all those constitutional powers, and for all that liberal policy which I have 
 hitherto supported. These Western gentlemen who are so much interested in 
 this measure have stood by us and now I tell them that I shall stand by them. 
 I shall be found where they look for me. I have asked their votes once and 
 again for objects important to the Atlantic States. They have liberally given 
 those votes. And now having an object interesting to them and their constitu- 
 ents, a first object and a great object, they have a right to find me at their side, 
 acting with them, acting according to my own principles and proving my own 
 consistency. And so they shall find me. And so they do find me. On ttiis oc- 
 casion I am with them ; I am one of them. I am as Western a man on this bill 
 as he among them who is most Western. This chair must change its occupant, 
 another voice will address the Senate from this seat, before an object of this nat- 
 ure, so important, so constitutional, so expedient, so highly desirable to a great 
 portion of the country, and so useful to the whole, shall fail here for the want, 
 either of a decisive vote in its support, or of an earnest recommendation of it 
 to the support of others. 
 
 Adams and Gallatin and Webster were not accu.stomed to expend 
 their strength on what was temporary or transitory. Constitutional 
 principles have not changed since their day. The policy which each of 
 them in turn urged upon his countrymen, and reckoned as among his most 
 important titles to their favor, was not for a single year or a single gen- 
 eration. It was never more expedient than to-day. I wish to urge upon 
 Congress the wisdom of expending uponthe internal water ways of the 
 country a sum at least equal to that which Adams and Gallatin pro- 
 posed. I think no river and harbor bill should contain a smaller appro- 
 priation for the rivers and lakes of our present dominion, extending from 
 the Atlantic to the Pacific, than that which Gallatin and Adams pro- 
 
14 
 
 posed for a people of seven millions, whose revenue w^as but fourteen 
 millions, whose territory was not inhabited half-way from the Atlantic 
 to the Mississippi, who had but two States touching that river, who 
 navigated but two of the five great lakes, to whom steam as a motive 
 power was scarcely known. 
 
 The sum which the river and harbor bill of 1882, the object of so much 
 senseless and unreasoning clamor, appropriated for our entire river im- 
 provements, exclusive of the Mississippi and Missouri, slightly exceeded 
 $5,000,000, I propose to state the reasons why this expenditure should 
 be maintained and made permanent. It costs the American people 10 
 cents apiece. It is but a grain of mustard-seed compared with the vast 
 advantage to our foreign commerce and the advantage, much more vast, 
 to our domestic commerce. Judiciously applied it will increase the 
 value of every grain-field in the West and every cotton-field in the 
 South. Every householder in New England will feel the diminution 
 it will cause in the price of his food — will save more than his share of 
 the cost in the price of his meat and his flour. 
 
 If there be anything to which the Repul)licans of the country and of 
 my own State are pledged it is this. They have repeatedly and em- 
 phatically reiterated their allegiance to a liberal policy of internal im- 
 provement from their earliest organization. 
 
 Since Grallatin made his famous report and since Adams left the 
 Senate more than 120,000 miles of railroads have been erected for the 
 service of American commerce. To aid them large public grants of 
 land and credit have been made. These have removed the necessity 
 for many of the works contemplated by our early statesmen. But the 
 reasons for liberal appropriation for internal water communication have 
 been strengthened and not weakened. Another necessity, new and 
 more imperious, has been created. Great as has been the increase of 
 the means of transportation, the demand for that increase has grown in 
 far greater proportion. To maintain our rivalry with foreign nations 
 abroad, to secure the independence of our own manufactures, to develop 
 a productive capacity undreamed of by our predecessors, to keep up the 
 rate of wages on which republicanism itself is dependent, all require 
 the reduction to the lowest possible point of the cost of transportation. 
 But to hold in check the great railroad power itself, to prevent it from 
 fixing both rates of carriage and prices of production from becoming 
 independent of competition and of the ordinary laws of trade, we must 
 improve and develop to the fullest extent our great natural water ways. 
 
 The census, the reports of the boards of trade of our chief cities, of 
 the great railroads and canals, and especially Mr. Windom's masterly 
 state paper on transportation routes to the seaboard, and the admira- 
 ble reports on internal commerce by Mr, Nimmo are all full of in- 
 struction. There are some conclusions upon which all the leading au- 
 thorities are agreed from which we may derive much light. 
 
 First, all the authorities and the experience of this country and Eu- 
 rope unite in teaching us that competition or the law of supply and 
 demand do not operate to protect the public against excessive freight 
 charges by railroads as in the case of free highways. The whole rail- 
 road system of a country becomes, sooner or later, a unit for the pur- 
 -pose of fixing the price of transport of merchandise. Mr. Nimmo in 
 his report on internal commerce for July, 1881, page 17, states the 
 conclusion as follows: 
 
 Competition between common carriers on free highways and the law of sup- 
 ply and demand have from time immemorial been regarded as the natural and 
 
15 
 
 adequate regulative principles with respect to freij^ht charges. An agreement 
 as to the establishment and maintenance of rates among any number of carriers 
 on a free highway of commerce does not of course preclude the possibility of 
 competition upon such highway; but the case is different with respect to the 
 establishment and maintenance of competing railroads. In the latter case the 
 agreements are not made by individual carriers, but by the owners of the high- 
 ways of commerce themselves together with all their organized agencies for 
 transportation. 
 
 This is established by most abundant proof. Mr. Randolph, Secretary 
 of the Chicago Board of Trade (Nimmo's report, 1880, appendix, pages 
 3-5) gives an instructive history of the establishment of rates by the 
 joint executive committee of the East and West lines of railroad in 1879. 
 
 Their first rate, evStablished June 23, 1879, was on the basis of 20 cents 
 per one hundred pounds from Chicago to New York. This was a large 
 advance on previous summer rates, wliich rates had proved amply re- 
 munerative and had enabled the roads to pay good dividends and im- 
 prove their roads and equipment. When the arrangement was found 
 to operate in forty days, on August 4 the rate was advanced 25 per cent. 
 By August 25 it was advanced 50 per cent., by October 13, 75 per cent. ; 
 and by November 10, 100 per cent. , or to 40 cents per 100 pounds. This 
 was without any essential modification of local rates. This was main- 
 tained till the opening of lake navigation in the spring of 1880, when 
 it was reduced to 35 cents, and April 14, 1880, to 30 cents. Thirty cents 
 per 100 pounds is an average of 6} mills per ton per mile. The aver- 
 age cost of moving all freight, local and through, of all classes, grain 
 being but fourth class, was, in 1879, 4.86 mills per ton per mile and for 
 the following year even less. 
 
 Mr. Windom's committee establish this conclusion beyond contro- 
 versy by their history of railroad transportation in Great Britain, France, 
 Belgium, Prussia, and in this country. (Windom's report, pages 111- 
 118.) 
 
 Second. All the authorities are in substance agreed that it is impos- 
 sible to control the railroads in the matter of rates 1)y the direct exercise 
 of the authority of Government. Mr. Windom declares, as the result 
 of the attempts to prevent combinations and consolidations in England, 
 that for more than a third of a century the failure has been complete. 
 (Report, page 126. ) The railroad couunissioners of Massachusetts de- 
 clare "that the English legislation has neither accomplished anything 
 which it sought to bring about nor prevented anything it sought to 
 hinder. ' ' 
 
 Third. Competition, which is to secure and maintain cheap transpor- 
 tation, must embrace two essential conditions: First, it must be con- 
 trolled by a power with which combination will be impossible; second, 
 it must operate tlirough cheaper and more ample channels of commerce 
 than are now provided. (Windom, page 242.) 
 
 Two methods of accomplishing this desired result have been sug- 
 gested. One is the construction and operation by the Government of 
 one or more railroad lines which will regulate all others. The other 
 is the improvement of our great natural channels of water communica- 
 tion, their connection by canals and short railway portages where needed, 
 with such suitable and reasonable expenditure upon harl)ors, rivers, 
 and creeks as shall be necessary to render them accessible. 
 
 The. first of these methods was once recommended to the people of 
 Massachusetts, who were advised to buy and operate the Fitchburg 
 Railroad. The Windom committee speak respectfully of the plan of 
 constructing by the United States one or more double-track freight 
 
1() 
 
 railroads to be controlled by the Goveruraeut and operated at a low 
 speed. They do not recommend this plan. But they say that such 
 roads — 
 
 "Would be able to carry at much less cost than can be done under the present 
 system of operating fast and slow ti-ains on the same road; and, being incapable 
 of entering into combinations, would no doubt serve as a very valuable regu- 
 lator of all existing railroads within their influence. 
 
 But the practical objections to this scheme are of such a nature that I 
 think it highly improbable that the American people will ever be brought 
 to approve it. It Avill require a large original outlay. It demands a 
 very large force of employes to be controlled by each successive admin- 
 istration. This force will be, or will at least be believed to be, a great 
 political instrumentality. It makes the Government a rival and com- 
 petitor of large business associations. Government railroads not being 
 managed with a view to profit, there will be no stimulant in the desire 
 of gain to develop the resources of the country by the construction of 
 branch lines and feeders. It may be doubted whether the Government 
 railroad will always he able to defend itself against its powerful rivals 
 who themselves, so far as they can wield political power, can get a 
 share in its management. The final executive control of a government 
 railroad is by no means certain to be in the hands that are fitted for its 
 management. The location and the management of a great railroad 
 must necessarily have great but varying and unequal effect on the pros- 
 perity of different communities. This would cause constant jealousies 
 and complaints. It would not long be tolerated that the resources of 
 the Government, to which all equally contribute, should be expended 
 unequally. This complaint could never be removed until the Govern- 
 ment undertook to supply transportation for every part of the country. 
 
 The second of these methods is recommended by the concurrent au- 
 thority of the ablest men, whether statesmen or experts, who have in- 
 vestigated the subject, aod by the marvelous results it has already ac- 
 complished. 
 
 Government, in the promotion of commerce with foreign nations or 
 among the States by providing safe and convenient routes of transport, 
 has two classes of objects which demand its attention. First, are the 
 great arteries of traffic such as the Mississippi Eiver, the lakes, the great 
 routes which connect centers of trade like Chicago, Cincinnati, Saint 
 Louis, Milwaukee, Louisville, with Xew York, Boston, Philadelphia, 
 Baltimore, New Orleans. The Atlantic Ocean also, the great highway 
 of nations, is a great carrier also for local commerce, and its competition 
 is felt in lowering freights on many of our important railroads. 
 
 Second, are special but important localities which need the national 
 resources to make them a part of the great system. Such are in my 
 own State, Lynn, Taunton, the towns and cities on Charles Kiver. The 
 principle on which these are to be aided should be carefully limited. 
 But the commerce of each of them with other States and with other 
 countries is a national concern. It can be developed only b}^ the na- 
 tional authority. As I shall hereafter show the aggregate of such ex- 
 penditure will produce a thousand-fold return in national wealth and 
 benefit. 
 
 The river or lake or ocean is free to all mankind. There can be no 
 monopoly in its use. No combination can control it or secure any ad- 
 vantage in its benefits. When it is once prepared for the service of com- 
 merce it is permanent and does not perish with the using. Even in its 
 competition with the railroad it takes but a small portion of the entire 
 
17 
 
 freight ; it is the perpetual, sure, and inevitable regulator of rates. There 
 is no practical limit to the carrying capacity of national navigable waters, 
 while the railroad is limited by the frequency with which trains can be 
 run and by the terminal lacilities. Another fact is well settled by 
 modern experience: 
 
 The cost of water transportation diminishes in proportion as the size of ves- 
 sels increases. The vahie of any water route is measured by the capacity and 
 etficiency of its most defective part. If from lack of proper improvements a 
 single harbor on any •;iven line can atford facilities for only the smaller class of 
 vessels the value of the entire line is graded down to correspond with the inade- 
 quate harbor. — Secretary Wiiidom's letter to lake improvement conveidion at Saint 
 Paid, December, 1878. 
 
 Let us see for a moment how the public expenditure in the improve- 
 ment of our great water ways and tlieir increased competition with the 
 railroads has already diminished the cost of transportation in the single 
 article of wheat. This diminution of the cost of transportation dimin- 
 ishes the price to the consumer, while it increases it to the producer. 
 The diminution of freights causes the increase of our supply of bread- 
 stulfs to Europe. That not only enal)les our farmers to dispose of a 
 larger quantity of their product abroad, but diminishes the price there. 
 The price abroad determines the price here. So that by diminishing 
 freight we diminish the cost of the food of the American workman of the 
 Eastern States, while the American farmer is enabled to supply Europe. 
 Formerly the farm was an isolated and independent homestead. The 
 farmer raised the larger part Of what he consumed, and consumed 
 nearly everything he raised. To-day the American farmer is a mer- 
 chant, whose competitor is on the Ganges or the Bosporus. 
 
 Among the chief objects of internal improvements in the bill which 
 Mr. AVebster defended against the veto of President Polk was the Mis- 
 sissippi River, whose perilous navigation the great orator so impress- 
 ively descril)es. The wise liberality of the National Government has 
 already much improved the channel of this stream from Saint Louis to 
 Xew Orleans, and has enabled the river itself, compelled by the genius 
 of a great engineer, to cut a passage through the obstruction at its mouth. 
 
 Steamers of 6,000 tons, drawing thirty feet of water, now pass freely 
 in and out of Xew Orleans, where but a few years ago vessels of twenty 
 feet draught were unable to pass, except at uncertain intervals and after 
 long detentions. I feel no little personal gratification that I have 
 been able to contribute something to this result. From a time before 
 the adoption of the Constitution the charge has been made against the 
 people of the Northeast that they desired to compel all the commerce 
 of the Northwest to seek an eastern outlet, and were hostile to the ac- 
 quisition of the right to navigate the Mississippi, and to the improve- 
 ment of that navigation after the river itself became ours. Washing- 
 ton, in his Farewell Address, assured the people of the West how un- 
 founded was this suspicion. But it has been kept alive down to our 
 own day. It plaj" ed its evil part in hurling John Quincy Adams from 
 power. I hope the jetties Avhich opened the mouth of the Mississippi, 
 constructed by the aid of New England votes, may forever perform 
 their beneficent office. 
 
 The jetties were completed in 1879. In that year the wheat and 
 wheat iiour and corn and corn-meal shipped to foreign coimtries from 
 New Orleans was 5,920,487 bushels as against 5,170,406 bushels in 
 1856. In 1882 it had gone up to 16,859,343 bushels. This consisted 
 entirely of grain received at New Orleans from Saint Louis, and is de- 
 Ho 2 
 
18 
 
 clared ))y Mr. Nimmo iu his report for 1882 to be largely the result of 
 the jetties. Vessels drawing thirty feet aud carrying G,000 toiLs now 
 pass in and out of New Orleans as freely and punctually as they can 
 traverse the open Gulf. 
 
 The vice-president of the Baltimore and Ohio llailroad, Mr. King, 
 in his report to the joint executive committee of the Ea^st and West 
 trunk lines dated April 27, 1881, states the total charges for transport- 
 ing grain from Saint Louis to Liverpool, via New Orleans, to be 28 
 cents per bushel, while at the sjime time the charge via New York was 
 36]- cents per bushel, The.se rates include all charges. At the time 
 INIr. King refers to the river rate from Saint Louis to New Orleans was 
 82 cents per bushel. Here, then, is a saving o[ 8\ cents per bushel 
 on the transportation of grain fi'om Saint Louis to Liverpool caused 
 by the improvement in the Missi-ssippi navigation. But the instrumen- 
 talities for transporting grain by the IMissi.ssippi were not completely 
 organized at the date of these statistics. Jtlr. Ss'immo says that well- 
 informed pei'sons believe that grain can thus be transported at a profit 
 from Saint LouLs to New Orleans at 4 cents a bushel. This would 
 make a total diminution of 12| cents j)er bushel. But, keeping within 
 the possibility of doubt, let us ascribe a saving of 10 cents per bushel 
 only to this one improvement in water communication and see its im- 
 portant conse<:j[uences. 
 
 "We exported in 1881 150,565 467 bushels of wheat alone. An an- 
 nual saving of 10 cents per bushel is a saving of §15,000,000 annually 
 of export tax on the one article of wheat. 
 
 We exported in 1872, the year when the transportation of grain to 
 the Atlantic from points as far west as Chicago fairly began — 
 
 
 1872. 
 
 1880. 
 
 Wheat 
 
 Wheat flour 
 
 
 26, 423, 080 
 2,514,5:35 
 34,491,650 
 
 153,252,795 
 6,011,419 
 98, 169. 877 
 
 Indian corn 
 
 bushels... 
 
 
 The total export of wheat and corn increased from 63,429,165 bush- 
 els in 1872 to 279,707,808 bushels in 1880. On this is an annual sav- 
 ing of $27,000,000. 
 
 This increase in exportation — 
 
 Says Mr. Nimmo — 
 
 of the cereal products of the country constitutes one of the most striking: devel- 
 opments of commerce ever recorded. 
 
 He further says: 
 
 The reduction which has taken place during the past four years in the cost of 
 transportation between the "West and the seaboard has had a marked ett'ect in re- 
 ducing the export price of corn and of certain other agricultural products of the 
 West, and has been one of the principal causes of the rapid increase in the ex- 
 portation of the products of agriculture to foreign countries. 
 
 In 1872 there was imported from the United States into Great Brit- 
 ain and Ireland of wheat and wheat flour 17,984,118 bushels, being 
 20.2 per cent, of theii" whole importation. In 1880 there was imported 
 from the United States, of the same, 83,487,243 bushels, being 65.4 per 
 cent of the whole importation. The whole importation increased fi-om 
 58,877,406 bushels in 1872 to 127,746,325 bushels in 1880, So that 
 Great Britain got from abroad 40,000,000 bushels more in '80 than in 
 
19 
 
 '72, and the United States supplied 65.4 per cent, of the large impor- 
 tation against 20.2 per cent, of the smaller. We are therefore not only 
 driving Russia and other food-producing countries from the British 
 market, but dri\'ing the British farmer from his own. Russia, which 
 in 1872 imported into the United Kingdom 33,486,091 bushels of wheat, 
 in 1879 imported but 15,162,639, and in 1880, 5,376,202. 
 
 This large increase in the total quantity of wheat imported into the United 
 Kingdom — 
 
 Says Mr. Nimmo — 
 
 is due not so much to the Increase of population in that country as to the de- 
 creased production of wheat in England. Cheaper transportation from points 
 of production has enabled Americiin producers to compete with English pro- 
 ducers more successfully than formerly. 
 
 Mr. Windom estimates the saving which will be made on the corn 
 and wheat crops of Iowa and Minnesota alone at ^36,000. 000. (Report, 
 pages 212, 214, 215.) 
 
 Wheat is by no means the only article which exhibits these marvel- 
 ous results of the reduction of the export tax. The consumption of 
 corn increased in Great Britain fi-om 16.000,000 bushels in 1860 to over 
 74,000,000 in 1879, the price diminishing from 97 cents in 1860 to 66 
 in 1879. 
 The reduction- 
 Says Mr. Ximmo — 
 
 in the cost of transportation in the United States from the "Western and North- 
 western States to the seaboard during the last six years has tended greatly to in- 
 crease the exportation ot both wheat and corn 'to Europe, and especially to 
 the United Kingdom. 
 
 The cost of transporting wheat from Chicago to New York city by lake and 
 canal fell from an average of 24.25 cents per bushel, not including canal tolls, of 
 3.1 cents per bushel in 1S72 to an average of 12.22 cents per bushel, including 
 canal tolls, of 1.03 cents per bushel in 1880. 
 
 New York within the past twelve months has made to the commerce 
 of the country the magnificent contribution of her canal property of a 
 hundred millions in value, that these canal tolls may be saved. 
 
 Such, Mr. President, are the marvelous results of the liberal policy 
 commended to us by the great statesmen of the last generation, as shown 
 in the export of the article of breadstufts alone. We are but beginning 
 to reap this precious harvest. The amount of this export is and will 
 be fluctuating from a variety of well-known causes. But the law of its 
 increase is fairly seen in the facts which I have stated. It is not merely 
 the saving in the burden of freights that is the result of our improved 
 means of communication, ample as that is to justify a far greater ex- 
 penditure than we have ever made or even proposed. It is the possibility 
 of seUing this vast product at all which our improved communication 
 has created. It is not the annual sa\'ing of fifteen millions of freights, 
 but it is the production and sale to Great Britain of one hundred and 
 twenty-five million dollars' worth of food that in the article of wheat 
 alone our cheap lines of transport has made possible. 
 
 Our chief articles of export are breadstulfs, cotton, provisions, in- 
 cluding live animals, and illuminating oils. Of these ^ve exported in 
 1883 nearly $700,000,000 in value. Oui" export must be exi)ected to be 
 constanth^ on the increase. It amounted to §219.932,650 in the first 
 three months of 1883, against 8179.829,859 in the corresponding period 
 of 1882. We are not subjected to the same close rivalry in the articles 
 
20 
 
 of cottou and illnininatiug oils as in breadstiiffs and provisions. But 
 the saving in freight is as important as is the large if not equal saving 
 on the domestic freights of the imports from abroad in the process of 
 their distribution to the homes and places of labor where they are con- 
 sumed. I do not know that political economy has settled the question 
 Tvhat proportion of a tax like that of transportation or a duty on im- 
 ports falls on the producer and what on the consumer. But it is surely 
 far within bounds to say that a general reduction in freights equal to 
 that which saves ten cents a bushel on wheat for its transport from the 
 centre of its production to the seaboard would work a total saving to 
 the American people in the articles which are the subjects of our foreign 
 commerce of at least ninety millions annually. 
 
 It is impossible within the limits of a single speech to state one in a 
 hundred of the striking instances of the reduction of railroad freights 
 by the improvement of the means of water transportation. This in- 
 fluence is, of course, chiefly confined to bulky articles such as bread- 
 stuffs, coal, lime, clay, stone, minerals, lumber, cotton, where the ne- 
 cessities of commerce do not demand high rates of speed, and where the 
 freight is a large proportion of the value. 
 
 Mr. Nimmo declares that the regulating influence of the two great 
 water lines — the lakes and the Mississippi — is felt throughout the en- 
 tire Western and Northwestern States and Territories. The growth of 
 Chicago is due to the fact that it is the most important center in this 
 country of a railroad system, subject to the regulating influence of cheap 
 water lines to the seaboard. 
 
 JNIr. Nimmo sums up the result with reference to the Erie Canal as 
 follows : The rates per ton per mile on the railroads and the canal shew 
 a great reduction from 1857 to 1880. In 1857 the rates per ton per mile 
 were — 
 
 
 I 1857. 
 
 ' 1880. 
 
 New York Central Railroad 
 
 3.12 
 
 .88 
 
 
 .799 
 
 .49 
 
 
 The Erie Canal— 
 
 He says — 
 
 continues to exert an exceedingly important influence as a regulator of rail 
 rates, and although with respect to through trafHe the Erie Canal successfully 
 competes with the Xew York Central Railroad chiefly for the transportation of 
 grain, minerals, lumber, and other coarse freights; yet if the rail rates on the 
 higher classes of freights are much advanced, a large deflection of traffic at once 
 takes place to the slower and cheaper mode of transportation by the canal. Rail 
 rates are adjusted with reference to this fact. 
 
 Henry G. Herte, esq., secretary of the National Cotton Exchange, gives 
 a statement of the eflect of the opening of the mouth of the Mississippi 
 on the commerce of that river and the region lying west of it, in which 
 statistics rise to eloquence. 
 
 Mr. AVindom gives the following result of the investigations of his 
 committee, report, pages 52 and 53: 
 
 During the year 1872 the "all-rail" rates were 24.5 per cent, higher than the 
 "all-water" rates, the " lake and rail " rates were 7 per cent, higher than the 
 " all- water " rates, and the " all-rail " rates were 16.3 per cent, higher than the 
 "lake and rail" rates. 
 
 The average summer rail rate for 1872 (May, June, July, August, September, 
 October, and November) was 31f cents, and the average winter rail rates in 1872 
 
21 
 
 (December, January, February, March, and April) was 36| cents, the average 
 winter rate being- IG per cent, higher than tiie average summer rate. By com- 
 paring the all-rail rates for the months of June, July, ami Augu.sl with the all- 
 rail rates for December, January, and February we ol)tain a more accurate ex- 
 pression of the etlect of ample water facilities in competition with etiually ample 
 rail facilities. The average all-rail rate during the three summer months just 
 named was 27 cents, and the average of the winter months was >y, the winter 
 average being HA per cent, higher than the summer average, when the compe- 
 tition of water transport was in full force. It may be supposed that the increase 
 in tbe rail rates during the winter months is caused by the increased cost of 
 transport during that season of the year, but this is true only to a very limited 
 extent. The chief cause is the absence of competition by lake and canal. This 
 is evident from the fact that although the cost of transportation by rail is not 
 greater in October and November than in June and July, yet the average of the 
 rates during the former months is HA per cent, higher than the average of the 
 rates during the latter months. 
 
 The pressure of traffic during the months of October and November, when the 
 facilities for transport by water are limited, in connection with the fact that the 
 Erie Canal is at that time taxed to its utmost capacity, causes an advance in the 
 rates on the lake and on the canal, and the rail rates at once go up to about the 
 average for the winter months. It appears that in this case the increased 
 charges by rail are due solely to the increase in the rates on the lake and on the 
 canal. This fact was clearly stated before the committee by Mr. J. M. Walker, 
 president of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railway (evidence, page 266), 
 a road which does not compete with any water line. Mr. Walker states that the 
 winter and summer rates are the same on his road, and he thinks that " this is 
 the rule with the Western roads generally." He states, also, that he believes 
 that those roads which run in competition with transport on the Mississippi 
 River makes such changes in their freight taritt's. 
 
 It is generally true that the roads which increase their rates during the winter 
 months are those which run in competition with the water lines during the sum- 
 mer months, and it is quite probable, therefore, that but for such water competi- 
 tion the winter rates would be maintained throughout the year. 
 
 Mr. Franklin Edson, the president of the New York Produce Ex- 
 - change, declares in a letter to Mr. Windom: 
 
 The water lines may be so improved that during seven and one-half months 
 of the year the time of transit from Chicago and Milwaukee to New York need 
 not be more than ten to eleven days, at a cost of about S3 to ^i.oO per ton, in- 
 cluding all charges, and quantity always guaranteed. The said charge in sum- 
 mer from Chicago to New York can not be less than S8 per ton to pay actual 
 expenses and no dividends, and in order to pay dividends there has to be an 
 advance of about $4 per ton in the railway freight charges, which advance is 
 uniformly made every year on the close of the water lines by frost. (Windom, 
 App.,176). 
 
 A striking exhibition of the effect of water competition in reducing 
 rail freight charges is given to the Senate committee by Mr. Utley, 
 president of the Illinois and Michigan Canal: 
 
 The freight charges on the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad is only 
 8 cents per hundred pounds from Henry to Chicago, between which points there 
 is water competition, while the route from Tiskilwa, only twelve miles farther 
 west than Henry and beyond the eflfect of canal competition, is 15 cents per hun- 
 dred pounds, or nearly as much for twelve miles as for one hundred miles. 
 
 This is but one of hundreds, probably thousands, of instances no less 
 remarkable. The cost of the freight of a bale of cotton from New York 
 to Cold Brook, in the county w^here I dwell, one hundred and eighty-four 
 miles, was, at a recent date, .28 per hundred pounds. The charge for 
 the same bale of cotton transported by all rail from Savannah to New 
 York, a thousand miles, was at the same period a trifle less. 
 
 This is because of the competing water line. Every dollar expended 
 in the improvement of the harbor at Savannah cheapens the cotton to 
 the manufacturer in the interior of Massachusetts. 
 
 I annex some tables showing the constant reduction of freights and 
 the comparative cost of freights by water and by rail. 
 
22 
 
 III 
 
 d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d 
 
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 iii 
 
23 
 
 Thus the competition by Avater operates in reduction of railroad tariffs, and 
 no understanding among railroad managers can prevent it. 
 
 [From report on commerce and navigation, 1883, Treasury Department, page 
 
 Ixvii.] 
 
 Average lake and canal rates, including Buffalo transfer chargtjs and tolls : 
 1868 to 1872, both inclusive, 23 cents per bushel for wheat. 
 1873 to 1877, both inclusive, 12.4 cents per bushel for wheat. 
 1878 to 1883, both inclusive, 10.7 cents per bushel for wheat. 
 
 [From New York Produce Exchange annual report for 1882, page 508.] 
 Average lake rates between Chicago and Buffalo : 
 1868 to 1872, both inclusive, 7.78 cents per bushel. 
 1873 to 1877, both inclusive, 4.34 cents per bushel. 
 1878 to 1882, both inclusive, 3.90 cents per bushel. 
 
 Foreign commerce is represented by an export in the twelve months 
 ending April 30, 1884, of $800,194,901, and an import of $761,405,450. 
 Vast as these sums appear, onr exports of food and cotton are yet small 
 compared with the productive capacity of onr domain. The center of 
 production of each is still rapidly traveling westAvard. We hope in a 
 not distant futu re to rival them with our export of manufactures. How 
 narrow and timid the parsimony which grudges the outlay of a few 
 millions when imperatively demanded by this immense interest ! Every 
 dollar expended in removing the obstructions in the pathway of this 
 commerce to the sea has borne fruit and will hereafter bear fruit a hun- 
 dred -Ibid in national wealth and power. All expenditures we have ever 
 made or ever proposed on lakes, rivers, and harbors together are trifling 
 compared with what our rivals' are putting forth to maint{iin themselves 
 against our competition. We have 23,000 miles of stormy and dan- 
 gerous coast line on the oceans alone. England has but 1,3(X); yet she 
 expended fifteen millions on her harbors in 1874. 
 
 The breakwater at Plymouth cost her $7,214, 325. That at Portland 
 cost her $5,043,870. Holyhead cost her $6,490,895. The total ex- 
 penditure of the Clyde Trust to June 30, 1875, was £6,774,315 or, 
 about $33,000,000, a sum greater than we had expended on all our 
 rivers and harbors together from the foundation of the Government to 
 1873, and three times as much as we had expended on our 20, 000 miles 
 of Western rivers. This outlay has converted the Clyde from a shallow 
 stream, fordable at many points between Glasgow and the sea, into a 
 river capable of bearing on its waters the commerce and ships of all 
 nations. Yet we are accused of extravagance when we would devote a 
 fifth part of this sum to the thousand miles of the Mississippi. I can 
 not give the expenditure upon the Mersey. But the debt of the Mer- 
 sey Docks and Harbor Board outstanding in 1882 was 181,424,405. 
 
 It is difficult to find a full and satisfactory statement of the expendi- 
 ture of Great Britain for this class of works, as they are largely com- 
 mitted to special boards, whose returns are not accessible; but some 
 facts we know. To stimulate the cotton culture of India as a rival to 
 ours she guaranteed the interest on an outlay for Indian improvements 
 of $400,000,000, She is now contemplating a much larger outlay for 
 India. She pays annual interest on the Suez exchequer bonds of £199,- 
 874, and now proposes a second canal across that isthmus. 
 
 Canada enlists in the competition with an expenditure on her gov- 
 ernment railroads since 1868 of $30,406,481. She subsidizes a line of 
 steamships to Brazil. In 1880-'81 she paid on capital account $8, 17(5,316, 
 of which $4,968,503 represents outlay on the Pacific Kailroad, $608,702 
 on the Intercolonial Railway, $1,242,903 on the Welland Canal, $411,608 
 on the Ottawa canals, $334,681 on Dominion lands, and the remainder 
 
'on the other canals. In the same year she spent $2,900,000 on public 
 works. In the year alter the union of her two provinces, Canada, with 
 a population of little more than a million and a total revenue of 
 $1,4HS,000, expended two millions lor her canals. 
 
 England is not for herself or her colonies contented to foster her com- 
 merce by this class of expenditures alone. Her navy charge, which for 
 1882 was $;53,782,265, the cost of her army, which for the same year 
 was $92,222,925, the subsidies she grants her lines of steamships, her 
 costlj^ diplomatic service, are but the seed which this great husbandman 
 sows broadcast, whose return is reaped in the abundant harvest of the 
 commerce of barbarous and semi-barbarous states. 
 
 The statistics of France which pertain to this subject are more exact. 
 General Wright, the Chief of Engineers, has caused a table to be pre- 
 pared showing her expenditures from 1878 to 1882. 
 
 [From the Almanach de Gotha.] 
 Almanac of 1879— Expenditures of 1878. 
 
 MINISTERE DES TRAVAUX PUBLICS, 
 (a) Service ordinaire. 
 
 Routes et ponts 32, 150, 000 
 
 Navigation interieure 10,200,000 
 
 Ports 6, 100, 000 
 
 Total (in francs) 48,450,000= $9,690,000 00 
 
 (6) Travaux extraordinaires. 
 
 Routes et ponts $5, 792, 100 
 
 Navigation interieure 10,490,000 
 
 Ports 12,935,000 
 
 Total (in francs) 29,217,100= $5,843,420 00 
 
 Total 15,533,420 00 
 
 Almanac of 1880— Expenditures of 1879. 
 
 BIINISTERE DES TRAVAUX PUBLICS. 
 
 (a) Service ordinaire. 
 
 Routes et ponts 33, 150, 000 
 
 Navigation interieure 9,500,000 
 
 Ports 6, 000, 000 
 
 Total (in francs) 48, 650, 000= 9, 730, 000 00 
 
 (6) Travaux extraordinaires. 
 
 Routes et ponts 6, 215, 000 
 
 Navigation interieure 3,410.000 
 
 Ports 6, 690, 000 
 
 Total (in francs) 16, 315, 000= 3, 263, 000 00 
 
 Total 12,993.000 00 
 
 Almanac of 1881 — Expenditures of 1880. 
 
 MINISTERE DES TRAVAUX PUBLICS. 
 
 (a) Service ordinaire. 
 
 Routes et ponts , 36, 150, 000 
 
 Navigation interieure 9, 500, 000 
 
 Ports 6, 000, 000 
 
 Total (in francs) 51,650,000= 10,330,000 00 
 
 (6) Travaxix extraordinaires. 
 
 Routes et ponts 6, 354, 000 
 
 Navigation interieure 3, 720, 000 
 
 Ports 9, 085, 000 
 
 Total (in francs) 19,159,000= 3,831,800 00 
 
 Total 
 
 14, 161, 800 00 
 
25 
 
 Almanac of 1S82— Expenditures of 1881. 
 
 MINISTERE DES TRAVAUX PUBLICS. 
 
 (a) (Se/TJce ordinaire. 
 
 Koutes et ponts 33.700,000 
 
 Navigation interieure 9,900,000 
 
 Ports 6, 350. 000 
 
 Total (in francs) 49, 950, 000= 9, 990. 000 00 
 
 (b) Travanx extraordinaires. 
 Routes et ponts 4.070.167= 814.033 40 
 
 Total 10,804,033 40 
 
 Almanac of 1883— Expenditures of 1882. 
 
 MIXISTERE DES TRAVAVX PUBLICS. 
 
 (a) Service ordijiaire. 
 
 Routes et ponts 33, 177. 000 
 
 Navigation interieure 10, 9<X), 000 
 
 Ports 7, 200, 000 
 
 Total (in francs) 51,277,000= 10,255,400 00 
 
 (6) Travaux extraordinaire. 
 
 Routes et ponts 12,943,167 
 
 T^avigation interieure 2, 800, 000 
 
 Ports 2,300,000 
 
 Total (in francs) IS, 043, 167= 3, 608, 633 40 
 
 Total 13,864,033 40 
 
 Note. — Under the head of " Ordinary service of ports,"' the repairs of light" 
 houses and maintenance of lights are believed to be included. 
 
 To the above should also be added such grants as may have been made for 
 general or local improvement by special acts of appropriation. These can only 
 be obtained by searching the ofhcial publications of the laws. 
 
 [From Journal Ofiiciel, December 30, 1882— budget of 1883.] 
 Department of public works: Francs. 
 
 Ourrent appropriation 89, 725, 681 
 
 Extra appropriation 49, 462, 660 
 
 139, 188, .341 
 
 I This total includes salaries, works in Algeria and Corsica, streets of Paris, 
 light-houses and lights, railroads built by the state or in which the state is in- 
 terested, and other items that would not be included in our river and harbor 
 acts. The current appropriation under the head of " harbors, light-houses and 
 lights, maintenance, and current repaii'S," is 7,200,000 francs. How much of this 
 is for harbors does not appear. 
 
 ITEMS OF APPROPRIATIOX FOR 1883. 
 
 Ordinary service : Francs. 
 
 Bridges and roads, maintenance, and current repairs 29, 377. 000 
 
 Rivers, maintenance, and current repairs 5, 250. 000 
 
 Canals, maintenance, and current repairs 5. 650. (XK) 
 
 Harbors, including light-houses and lights 7, 200. 000 
 
 47, 477, 000 
 
 Extraox'dinary ser-\-ice ; i. e., additional work : 
 Extension and rectitication and filling up gaps in the system of na- 
 
 tional roads n 11, 000, 000 
 
 Construction of bridges 1,800.000 
 
 Improvement of rivers 1,750,000 
 
 Protection from overflow 1, 100, 000 
 
 Improvement of canals 1, 050, OOO 
 
 Improvement of harbors 2, 300, 000 
 
 19, 000, 000 
 47, 477, 000 
 
 66, 477, 000 
 
 Sit, 2y.), 400 
 
2G 
 
 I take the following from the Edinburgh Review for October, 1882:: 
 
 In brief the actual water ways of France amount to an aggregate length of 
 7,069 miles, not including any maritime navigation, such as that of the Seine 
 below Kouen. The cost of this fine system has been £43,608,516, or £6,230 per 
 mile. One thousand eight hundred and thirteen additional miles have been 
 authorized and are in course of execution by the state, the cost of which, to- 
 gether with that of the improvements, required on the existing lines, will at 
 least be an equal sum. France will shortl v be possessed of 8,880 miles of inland 
 water way, provided at a cost of from £80,000,000 to £100,000,000. 
 
 • • • • • :>: !): 
 
 On the 7,069 miles of French canals, acconling to the report of M. Krantz, the 
 transports amounted in 1874 to 2,132,957.000 imit« of traffic or kilometric 
 tons. This is equal to 126,(KK) tons per mile. In 1868, according to the Etude 
 hiatorique i t stntiqur *ur Voie^ de wmmunication df la France, par M. Felix Lv/- 
 (XJ«, published in 1873, the navigation dues produced 3,503,000 francs for 1.690,- 
 tlOO.OOO kilometric tons. This charge, which may be taken to cover cost of 
 maintenance and interest of money on the canals, is equivalent to 0.0325d. per 
 ton per mile. In 1847, under the regime of the old tariff, the dues amounted to 
 9,931,000 francs for 1,198,000,000 tons kilometric. 
 
 Since 1847, therefore, by comparing the two reports, it would seem that the 
 French canal dues have been reduced by three-fourths, and that the canal traffic 
 has nearly doubled. The chief disjidvantage of the minute statistics of which 
 the French are justly proud is the long time that generally elapses before their 
 outcome is thoroughly known. The date to which the figures of M. Krantz 
 apply is not stated in his report. But there can be no doubt that the actual 
 movement on the French canals is very much greater than the average above 
 cited. * * • 
 
 Without wearying our readers with any further arithmetical detail, we may 
 say that the closest calculation of the cost price of conveyance on the railways 
 of the United Kingdom which has been found hitherto practicable gives for 
 the year 1878 the cost of a little more than one-fifth of a penny (0,2076f?.) per 
 mile for every ton of loaded train. This price compares favorably with the cor- 
 responding item, where it has elsewhere been definitively ascertained. It is al- 
 most exactly that of the working of the ancien resean of the Orleans Railway in 
 1872, and, as a rule, is intermediate between the cost of continental lines and 
 those of the East Indian and Pennsylvania railways. 
 
 At this price, supposing all the wagons to be full and the traffic to be conducted 
 on the most favorable conditions, the cost of conveying a ton of coal amounts to 
 an average of 0.472fZ. per mile, allowing for the return of the empty wagons. 
 This, however, is for the tabulated working expenses alone. If we take them 
 as equal to 52 per cent, of revenue, as was the case in 1879, it will require the price 
 of 0.908<f. ix;r ton per mile to pay 4^ i)er cent, interest on capital. In other words, 
 the work which is done for a third of a penny by canal will cost uine-tenths of 
 a penny on a railway ; the former price covering 5 per cent, interest on capital, 
 and sinking fund, the latter covering only 4i per cent, interest and no sinking 
 fund. 
 
 These statistics become doubly impressive when vre reflect that we 
 have a single American State, one only among our thirty-eight States 
 and eight Territories, which is as large as France in territory, and far 
 greater in its rich and Tariona productive capacity. 
 
 The Constitution commits to Congress the otire of commerce with 
 foreign nations and among the States. The title of these two objects 
 to the national care is equal, if we look only to the words of the con- 
 stitutional mandate. But important as is foreign commerce in its rela- 
 tion either to national wealth or national dignity, domestic commerce 
 is infinitely more important. I wish to repeation this connection a few 
 sentences from what I have said elsewhere. 
 
 We have a dominion, excluding Alaska, greater than the Roman 
 Empii'e at its largest. It is only a sixth less in extent than all Europe 
 with her sixty empires, kingdoms, and republics. But by our mar- 
 velous lake and river system this extent of country is severed for all 
 purposes of internal and external commerce into twenty islands of 
 the size of Great Britain. It is 2, 750 miles from Boston to Queenstown. 
 This pathway is over a barren and desolate sea, beset with mist and 
 
27 
 
 iceberg, bearing no living thing upon its bosom except the vessels 
 which brave its dangers. At the end of the voyage is a foreign, rival 
 nation to share, and perhaps to monopolize, the profit of the advent- 
 ure. Not so with the pathways of domestic commerce. It is a thou- 
 sand miles bj river from Pittsburg to Cairo. It is a thousand miles 
 from Cairo to the month of the Mississippi. Tliere are 2,500 naviga- 
 ble miles trom Saint Louis to the headwaters of the Missouri. And 
 yet these are but a small fraction of the internal water courses of 
 America adapted or easily to be a<l:ipted to the purposes of national 
 commerce. Europe possesses no such dominion. She has no consid- 
 erable towns, except those in her eastern plain, more than four hundred 
 miles distant from the sea. Her Danube, her Rhine, her Rhone, her 
 Thames are pretty streamlets compiired with tlu^se which, with their 
 approaches and affluents, demand the c-are of American statesmanship. 
 
 Our domestic commerce does not travel the pathless and desolate 
 wastes of the sea. Its river pathways are bounded by farms and fac^ 
 tories and homes and populous toAvns. The river is the creator of 
 the city. Domestic commerce is all American. England spends fifty 
 millions a year on her navy, in time of peace, that she may command 
 the markets of semi-barbarous nations. Our domestic commerce does 
 not fijQd India or Egypt or Turkey at the end of its journey. It finds 
 there Iowa and Wisconsin and ^lissouri and California and Oregon. 
 It is perpetually creating new and free StiUes, like those which are com- 
 ing into life between the Mississippi and the Piu;ific: like that bear- 
 ing the name of Washington, which our own sons are building on 
 Puget Sound, to be in the near future another and a larger Massachu- 
 setts. Domestic commerce divides its profits with no foreigner. It is 
 American at both ends. 
 
 The statistics of this American commerce are as yet but imperfectly 
 gathered. But we know enough to conceive dimly its immense and 
 rapidly growing proportions. The whole exports of this country for 
 the year ending April 3, 18S4, were: Domestic products, $784,302,373; 
 foreign products, $32,200,157; in all, $816,502,530. 
 
 The total value of American manufactures by the census of 1880 
 was §5, 369, 579, 191, of which only about one hundred millions, or 2 per 
 cent. , was exported. Xinety-eight per cent. , therefore, becomes the 
 subject of internal commerce. 
 
 It would be Ciisy to demonstrate that our domestic commerce exceeds 
 our foreign in its real value to the nation more than a hundred-fold. 
 We are groping still blindly after new policies which shall increase our 
 exports and bring back to us our foreign Ciirrying trade. But every ten 
 years of our life adds 30 per cent, to our population, brings to us a new 
 nation of 15,000,000 of persons to be our customers and producers at 
 home. ^Vhat foreign commerce is like that? The commerce of the 
 cities of the Ohio River is undoubtedly more than two thousand millions 
 a year. We annually pay for transportation more than double th e entire 
 revenues of the Gk)vemment. Our seven Ohio States have 100,000 square 
 miles of bituminous coal field, more than sLx times that of Great Britain, 
 France, and Belgium combined. The production of their workshops 
 exceeds by more than 50 per cent, the whole imjwrts and exports of 
 Great Britain to and from all countries. Even in the cities where our 
 foreign commerce is greatest it is insignificant in comparison with their 
 domestic commerce and their manufacture. The trade of Xew York 
 city in the products of the lalxtr of Xew Enghmd alone is greater than 
 
28 
 
 the whole foreign coiuineree rarried on at that city, while the product 
 of her niaunfactures was in 1880 $814,000,000. 
 
 I must not al)use the patience of the Senate by relating the wonder- 
 ful and fascinating story of the growth of our commerce as shown in 
 certain localities, such as Chicago, Cincinnati, Saint Louis, the Upper 
 Missouri, and our great empire on the Pacitic, The Senator from Ore- 
 gon told us something the other day of the marvelous developments 
 and still more marvelous promise of his o^vn State. 
 
 It is estimated that Washington Territory will send abroad this year 
 350,000,000 feet of lumber, 200,000 tons of coal, 200,000 pounds of 
 hops, 200,000 cases of salmon, 5,000,000 bushels of wheat, 3,000,000 
 bushels of oats, 1,000,000 bushels of potatoes, and 2,500,000 pounds 
 of w^ool. In cargoes of 1,500 tons this produce will load nine hundred 
 large ships. 
 
 Mr. Poor, in his railroad manual, estimates the value of the tonnage 
 moved in this country by rail alone in 1881, deducting one-third for 
 duplication, at $12, 000, 000, 000. Taking the movements of merchan- 
 dise by water ways and land ways other than by rail into account, the 
 domestic produce moved and exchanged in this country must be at least 
 between thirty and forty thousand millions of dollars in value, or more 
 than forty times the value of our exports. The river commerce of the 
 single city of Cincinnati was last year more than $45,000,000, There 
 passes each year up and down Detroit River a tonnage greater than 
 enters Liverpool. The number of vessels that go in and out of Chicago 
 annually exceeds by 7,000 those of New York; and although these 
 vessels are, of course, smaller in size, the acliial tonnage of Chicago is 
 much more than half that of New York. These water ways are not 
 only of vast importance in themselves, but they are important also as 
 as a check upon the prices charged by the railroad. They are free. 
 When the water way is once fitted for transport it is the property of all 
 mankind. 
 
 The legislators of the States and of the nation have exhausted their 
 ingenuity to impose shackles upon the railroad. Sometimes the at- 
 tempt has been to fix rates by law; sometimes a rate according to dis- 
 tance; sometimes relief is sought by endowing competing routes; and 
 in one memoral)le instance the State has been urged to take the busi- 
 ness of railroad management into its own hands. But the strength of 
 these giants frequently, I am bound to say, with reason, and w^ ith the 
 laws of trade on their side, bursts in sunder these puny legislative fet- 
 ters. Railroad competition terminates in railroad combination. The 
 only check on the powder of the great railroad lines, when in concert, 
 over the commerce of the nation, is the comj^etition of the water way. 
 When the Erie Canal and the harbors of the lakes freeze in the winter 
 up go the freights. When canal, lake, and river open in the spring 
 down go the freights. 
 
 I do not and can not overstate the imi)ortance of this consideration 
 to the American peoi^le, and more especially to Massachusetts. The 
 diminution of the price of freight on the railroads of this country 1 
 mill a ton a mile makes an annual saving to the people of 870,000,000. 
 Great as is the interest of the South and West in domestic commerce 
 and transportation, it is not so great as that of Massachusetts. She 
 manufactures nearly one thousand million in value every year. Of 
 this I am justified, by the opinion of a business man of large experi- 
 ence, in saying not one-fiftieth is sent beyond sea. The rest goes all 
 over the land, by river and rail and lake, to be distributed in the West 
 
21) 
 
 and South, Avhence come her food and her iron and coal, and ^vool and 
 hides and cotton. 
 
 Every obstruction removed from the channel in a Western river, 
 every sunken rock blown out from a lake harbor, every creek or inlet 
 by which a navigable stream reaches its arms into the midst of wheat- 
 fields or cotton plantations, is an obstacle the less in the way of the 
 food to the mouths of her workmen, in the way of the material which 
 their cunning fingers are to change into products of use and beauty, in 
 the way of the sale of her manufactures to the customers on whom her 
 wealth is to depend. 
 
 To four principal objects must the statesmanship of Massachusetts 
 look in the future. Four things are needed for her prosperity. 
 
 First. Education and skill in her people. 
 
 Second. The maintenance and increase of her rate of wages. 
 
 Third. The annihilation of time and distance in the conveyance of 
 her material and her products. 
 
 Fourth. A rich and prosperous South and West with whom to deal. 
 
 ]\Ir. Windom estimates and demonstrates that the annual saving to 
 Xew England on the transportation of grain alone by the completion 
 of a single water line costing about eleven million of dollars, would 
 have amounted in 1872 to S6, 169, 834, and a saving of $6.70 per ton on 
 all the tonnage between the ^Mississippi and the East. So that this 
 single improvement would have paid for itself in a single year in its 
 saving in the cost of food and material to New England alone. 
 
 The average haul on the Xew York Central and Hudson River Rail- 
 road Company for the year ending September 30, 1881, was 228.34 miles. 
 If we call the average for the United States of the tonnage hauled two 
 hundred miles, a saving of one mill per ton per mile is an annual sav- 
 ing of 870,000,000, if Mr. Poor's estimate of the whole tonnage for 
 that year, 350,000.000 tons, be taken as correct. 
 
 Of the saving to Xew England in the diminution of freights of course 
 the larger share inures to Massachusetts. Her share in foreign com- 
 merce can be retained and extended only as she can diminish the burden 
 of transportation between the interior and the seaboard. To cheapen 
 her supply of food she must place the granaries of the West at the door 
 of her workshops. Every diminution in the cost of bringing material 
 and coal to her workshops and carrying her jDroduct to market aids her 
 skilled labor in its competition with foreign rivals and the new manu- 
 factories of the South and West. 
 
 Massachusetts is the third manufacturing State in the Union, and 
 Boston is the sixth manufacturing city. In 1880 Massachusetts con- 
 verted a material of three hundred and eighty-six millions into a product 
 of six hundred and thirty-one millions, not including the manufacture 
 of gas or of the products of fisheries or that done by railroads. In this 
 she employed a capital of more than three hundred millions, and paid in 
 wages 8128, 315, 362. She employed 352,255 persons, who undoubtedly 
 support by their labor 1.500,000 persons. Boston alone converts in her 
 workshops a material of eighty-one millions six hundred thousand into 
 a product of one hundred and thirty millions five hundred thousand, 
 employing a capital of near fifty millions, and giving occupation to more 
 than 60, 000 persons, and support to more than 300, 000 persons. I sup- 
 pose ^Massachusetts does not sell one-fiftieth of this product beyond sea, 
 and does not produce one-fiftieth of this material within her own bor- 
 ders. She is the farthest from her supplies and her market of all the 
 States of the Union, save two. The freight both ways handicaps her 
 
30 
 
 jnst so much in her competition with her \igorous Western rivals. I 
 hope and believe that she would support thLs policy of internal im- 
 provements on national grounds alone. But she certainly can' claim no 
 credit for disinterestedness. 
 
 The cost of transportation is sheer burden or tax, benefiting nobody. 
 The bushel of wheat has the same instrinsic value in Minnesota as in 
 London. The yard of cloth has the same intrinsic value in Lowell and 
 in Galveston. To annihilate distance, to put every portion of the coun- 
 try on an equality with everv^ other so far as rela,tes to its market of 
 purchase and its market of sale should be the object of our statesman- 
 ship. 
 
 There is another object not sufficiently considered which can only be 
 accomplished by that national care which it imperatively demands. 
 That is the annexing to the general system localities of large productive 
 capacity whose development is prevented and who are now unable to 
 take their fair share in its commercial advantages by physical obstacles 
 which a moderate and economic expenditure would overcome. There 
 iire many towns along our seacoast or the shores of our lakes or near 
 the mouths of rivers or creeks where a large manufacturing business is 
 springing up, which are wholly dependent on railroads for all their 
 freights or which are without railroads, where ample water communica- 
 tion might be secured at slight cost. There are many "Western commu- 
 nities whose wheat or bacon or beef can be taken to a foreign market 
 at a profit by the removal, for a few thousand dollars, of a sand bank 
 or rock in some river. There are many rich Southern cotton districts 
 into which commerce can thrust its arms by clearing from mud some 
 creek which runs up from the neighboring harbor. These are not 
 situated dfrectly upon the great routes across the continent, but their 
 trade is with foreign nations or with other States. Each of them is 
 placed by the Constitution nnder the care of Congress. In the aggre- 
 gate they contribute an enormous share to the production of the coun- 
 try, and to their development we must look chietly for its increase. 
 Such cases are Cambridge, Lynn, and Taunton, in my own State. Each 
 of those has been made the subject of criticism. There has been about 
 $00,000 made available for the improvement of Charles River above the 
 bridges, of which only about ten thousand has been expended. Allien 
 this improvement is completed a population in Cambridge, Brookline, 
 Belmont, WatertowTi, Newton, Brighton, and the Back Bay district 
 will make a saving of from 15 to 20 cents a ton upon heavy and bulky 
 articles imported from other States, such as coal, lumber, iron, lime, 
 Avood, stone, and sand. This would make a saving to that community 
 of the cost of the entire improvement in a single year. 
 
 Now, there are but two or th^e hours a day in which ve&sels of any 
 size can be safely moved. The result of the proposed work would be to 
 enable vessels drawing seventeen feet to be safely moved to their destina- 
 tion in a single tide. Now vessels of ten or twelve feet often require 
 two or three tides. Along the bank of this river, as I am told, at a 
 depth of two to six feet, Ls subsoil of coarse, hard gravel, where the 
 heaviest warehouses or factories can be sustiiined without piles, so that 
 several miles of water front, vnth wharves, warehouses, and factories can 
 here be added to the water front of Boston Harbor. Here then is an 
 expenditure wliich is each year to save its whole cost in lifting a burden 
 from a population double that of the whole city of Boston within my 
 own lifetime and many times double measuring it by its products and 
 its commercial wants. Lynn is a city of 40.000, and yet only seventh 
 
31 
 
 in size of the tweuty-two fair cities which Massachusetts wears as the 
 gems on her coronet. She hjis six hundred luauufacturLag establish- 
 ments. She employs nearly 10,000 workmen. She gives activity to a 
 capital of thirteen millions, and does a yeaiiy business of thiity-five 
 millions. 
 
 She asks that her harbor through which comes to her her coal, which 
 is the motive power of her industries, her lumber, iron, .stone, brick, 
 lime, cement, and clay, may at a reasonable cost be fitted for the larger 
 vessels which modern commerce finds most economical, and that she 
 shall not be at the mercy of railroads or compelled to Land her supplies ten 
 miles off in Baston. Are not these things to be done ? The commerce 
 of Lynu and Cambridge is with foreign nations and with other Stiites. 
 It is borne upon na^'igable waters solely within the national jurisdic- 
 tion. These communities could not do if they would, and you would 
 not permit them if they would, to do what Great Britain does in like 
 cases — empower a local board to do the work and defray the cost by 
 tolls upon commerce. If these objects are not national, the post-oflice 
 and the light-house and the courts of the United States are not na- 
 tional. 
 
 This can be and should be done by the General Government, and not 
 by States or private persons. The Constitution not only imi)Oses this 
 duty on the National Government, but that it might be discharged was 
 the principal reason for which the National Government was estal)- 
 lished. Iudi\i.duals and States have no jurisdiction over interstate or 
 international commerce, can not impose tolls, and have no ix)wer to 
 create even temporary obstacles in uaviaable waters for the purpose of 
 their improvement. All the high exercises of power which regulate 
 these two great classes of commercial transactions belong to Congress 
 alone. The General Government tak&s all the receipts and revenues of 
 commerce. For the general good it prohibits all export dutie-s and for- 
 bids the States from la^-ing duties on tonnage without the consent of 
 Congress. It takes all the receipts of commerce; therefore where ex- 
 penditures are needed for it they should be made by the General Gov- 
 ernment. The limitations within which this power should be exer- 
 cised seem to me not diflicult to state. 
 
 First. The public advantages must be clearly worth the expenditure. 
 The popular jealousy of all large outlays of public money is natural 
 and reasonable, and should be respected. No item should get a phice 
 among appropriations of this class which can not stand by itself and 
 vindicate its claim beyond all reasonable doubt by its sure promise of 
 a return many times exceeding the original cost. 
 
 Second. The commerce to be promoted most be a commerce with 
 foreign nations or between different States. 
 
 Third. The sum appropriated in any one year must fall within the 
 limits prescribed by a wise economy, having regard to the condition of 
 the Treasury and to other public needs. 
 
 The earnest public discussion which followed the passage of the river 
 and harbor bill in the summer of calls upon Congress for a care- 
 ful re- examination of the policy upon which these appropriations rest, 
 and of every item in detail. Nothing Is healthier than public jealou.sy 
 as to the spendmg of public money. But it is remarkable when we 
 get out of the region of mere clamor to find how little anybcnly, speak- 
 ing under a sense of responsibility, has been able to bring against that 
 much-abused measure. 
 
 April 17, ISS'2. the President sent a special message to Congress urg- 
 
32 
 
 iny; an appropriation of 01 0,000 to close gaps in the ^Mississippi levees, 
 as recommended by the INIississippi Eiver Commission, in addition toa' 
 like sum for which an estimate had already been submitted. The 
 President expresses his own approval of the plans of the commission. 
 He adds: 
 
 The immense losses and widespread suffering of the people dwelling near 
 the river induce me to urge upon Congress the propriety of not only making 
 an appropriation to close the gajis in the levees occasioned by the recent floods, 
 as reconinicnded ))y tlu- com in issioa, but that Congress should inaugurate 
 measures for the perniaiieiit improvenient of the navigation of the river and se- 
 curity of the valley. It may be that such a system of improvement would as it 
 progressed require the appropriation of twenty or thirty millions of dollars; 
 even such an expenditure, extending as it must over sevei-al years, can not be 
 regarded as extravagant in view of the immense interest involved. The safe 
 and convenient navigation of the Mississii)pi is a juatter of concern to all sec- 
 tions of the country; but to the Northwest, with its immense harvests needing 
 cheap transportation to the sea, and to the inhabitants of the river valley whose 
 lives and property depend upon the proper construction of the safeguards which 
 protect them from the floods, it is of vital importance that a well-matured and 
 comprehensive plan for improvement should l)e put into oi)cration with as lit- 
 tle delay as possible. The cotton product of the region subject to the devastat- 
 ing floods is a source of wealth to the nation and of great importance in keep- 
 ing the balance of trade in our favor. 
 
 It may not be inopportune to mention that this Government has imposed and 
 collected some $70,000,000 by a tax on cotton, in the production of which the 
 po})ulation of the Lower Mississippi is largely engaged, and it does not seem in- 
 equitable to return a portion of this tax to those who contributed it, particularly 
 as such an action will also result in an important gain to the country at large, 
 and especially so to the great and rich States of the Northwest and tlie Missis- 
 sippi Valley. 
 
 Congress differed with the Executive. A majority doubted the con- 
 stitutional power to appropriate money to save lands in the States bor- 
 dering on the Lower Mississippi from overflow by that river. They 
 found it ditiicult to point out a reason for undertaking to relieve at the 
 national charge the land overflowed by the Mississippi, which would 
 not require the performance of a like duty between high and low water 
 mark along the entire Atlantic and Pacific coasts and on every stream 
 within our borders. They therefore carefully eliminated from the bill 
 all appropriations for levees and inserted an express provision that "no 
 portion of this appropriation shall be expended to repair or build levees 
 for the purpose of reclaiming land or preventing injury to lands by 
 overflow. " I do not think there can be any reasonable doubt that the 
 levee system alone, not including any work designed for improvement 
 in navigation, surely w^ould have cost thirty million — the larger limit 
 named by the President. Some cautious judges estimate it at fifty 
 million. 
 
 Congress reduced by a million the sum recommended by the com- 
 mission for the river below Cairo. But they introduced S?l,100,000 
 for the Upper Mississippi. The policy adopted by Congress saved to 
 the country more than twenty-nine millions, not improbably more than 
 fifty million as compared with that of the President. 
 
 The President, however, was of the opinion that the bill contained 
 items which were not of national importance. He sent to Congress a 
 veto message in which he specified no objectionable instance and re- 
 affirmed his approval of the Mississippi appropriation. But he declared 
 that some of the objects provided for were local only, and suggested 
 withotit directly asserting that some claims were inserted in the bill to 
 win favor for others. But he gave Congress none of the information on 
 which he had relied. At the next session the House of Eepresenta- 
 
33 
 
 tives directed the Secretary of War, from whose Department the Presi- 
 dent was naturally supposed to have derived the knowledge upon which 
 he acted, to inform them "whether any moneys appropriated by the 
 act of August 2, 1882, making appropriations, &c., were appropriated 
 for works or objects that are not in the interest of or do not benefit 
 commerce or navigation; and, if so, to name such works or objects 
 and the respective amounts so appropriated." 
 
 The Secretary replies that he understands the direction of the House 
 as if the words "foreign or interstate" preceded the word "com- 
 merce," and that he is "relieved by the President from hesitation as 
 to the scope of the response, ' ' and that he has made a new and very 
 extended examination of the subjects covered. 
 
 This answer, made many months after the passage of the bill, doubt- 
 less was based on all the information in the possession of the President 
 as well as upon the new and very extended examination he had him- 
 self made. He specifies $1,032,000, about 5 per cent, of the whole bill, 
 as not in the interest of commerce and navigation. Considering the 
 likelihood of difference of opinion upon a subject of this kind this is a 
 very strong and interesting concession, not only to the merits of the 
 general policy but of the particular measure. There are very few ap- 
 propriation bills, or bills made up of items, in which the majority who 
 pass them, the committee who frame them, and even the member who 
 reports them, would not find a larger percentage of objection. The 
 difference between the President and Congress was this: he would add 
 twenty or thirty millions for Missiasippi levees and strike ofl" a million 
 which he thinks for local objects only ; Congress would keep off the twenty 
 or thirty millions, but would retain the one million to be expended, how- 
 ever, only if the President's objections are removed. 
 
 Not only are the objections of the Executive, so far as we can learn, 
 limited to a]K)ut 5 per cent, only of the entire appropriation, but a large 
 portion of the items which make that up are such as I think would 
 meet the public approbation. I believe the President would himself 
 change his mind on fuller information. I will not go over them all, 
 but I will take those in my own State. Three, and three only, are 
 specified within the limits of Massachusetts as not being for the inter- 
 est or benefit of foreign or interstate commerce and navigation. These 
 are: Plymouth Harbor, $14,000; Wareham River, $5,000; and Wood's 
 Holl, $50,000. The appropriation of 1882 for Plymouth Harbor was 
 made as the result of a special and urgent communication of the Sec- 
 retary of War, dated April 7, 1882, inclosing a special report of the en- 
 gineer. This was not inserted by any representative of Massachusetts 
 in either House, and first became known to me and my colleague when 
 our attention was called to it by the chairman of the Committee on 
 Commerce. This famous historic harbor depends for its existence on 
 the protection and preservation of Long Beach, a spit of sand project- 
 ing two and three-quarters miles out to sea. The Secretary informed 
 us that the equinoctial storm of 1882 had made a break over this, and 
 that another of equal severity would very probably destroy the harbor 
 by tiiling the channel with the sands of the beach. It was recommended 
 that the sum of $14,000, which it would cost to complete the break- 
 water newly finished, be made available at once, instead of being ex- 
 tended over two years, as had been designed. This breakwater is so 
 extended as to be an ample shelter for the beach and save the entire 
 harbor. 
 
 Ho 3 
 
34 
 
 The commercial reasons which render Plymouth a proper object of 
 national care are well stated in the engineer's report for 1870, page 458. 
 
 The State of JMassachusetts contributed $2,000 to this purpose in 1867. 
 
 Now, sir, this case of Plymouth presents and illustrates the precise 
 issue which I make with the opponents of this policy. It has a com- 
 merce with foreign nations and among the States. The public good far 
 exceeds the outlay. It is placed by the Constitution under the care of 
 Congress. No other authority is competent to do the work, and no 
 other authoritj' should do the work, if it were competent. It is not for 
 the public advantage that the commerce of New York and Boston 
 should be the sole objects of care, and that of Plymouth and Wareham 
 should die out. The large appropriations to remove the rocks of Hell 
 Gate from the approach to New York harbor or to construct the jetties 
 w^hich have opened the mouth of the Mississippi do not bring us a more 
 valuable return than the aggregate of small appropriations on which 
 the commercial prosperity of hundreds of Plymouths and Warehams 
 depend. The life of the centers is to be perserved, but the extremi- 
 ties should not die. 
 
 Wareham is an equally strong case. The reports of the engineers 
 (1874, page 218; 1879, page 303) give some of the reasons which justify 
 the small outlay provided for in the statute of 1882. These reasons 
 have strengthened with the increase of business since 1879. 
 
35 
 
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36 
 
 There is a smaller commerce in brick, lime, hay, clay, shells, wood, boats, cem- 
 ent, and similar coastwise traflSc. 
 
 Wareham is the nearest port to Sandwich and to the inland towns of Middle- 
 borouj^h, Bridgewater, and Brockton, the commerce and manufactures of each 
 of which equal those of Wareham. The railroad wharves of Wareham have 
 direct railway connection wi^i thet^e and other tributary towns, but inadequate 
 navijifation facilities in Wareham Harbor oblige these towns to receive their 
 water-borne supplies via Fairhaven and Sotnerset. 
 
 The total tonnage of vessels hailing from Wareham is 6,002 tons, so far as 
 known. The commerce of the port is not, however, canned in these, but more 
 generally is transported by water in other vessels of the United States. 
 
 The yearly arrivals and departures at this port compri.se, together, alx)ut 
 three hundred and tifty sailing vessels and also occasional steamers, and nu- 
 merous small craft. The supplies for the iron mills are brought in schooners of 
 350 to 600 tons burden, manufacturers considering it profitable to employ larger 
 vessels than formerly in freighting cargoes of coal and iron. The wharves in 
 Wareham Harbor are rendered difficult of approach for such vessels by reason 
 of bars in the tortuous channel. The nature of the above-mentioned industries 
 of this town is such that its railway traffic is dependent upon the facilities for 
 navigation. 
 
 It is hard to see by what procass of reasoning the propriety of the ap- 
 propriation for Wood's Holl can be seriously called in question. The 
 small expenditure would be abundantly warrantetl by the demand for 
 a harbor of refuge and a port for the revenue-cutters which are con- 
 stantly needed for aid to the vessels which pass in our harbors over the 
 foggy and dangerous navigation of the neighboring Nantucket Shoals. 
 But it is demanded also to construct a basin and harbor for the United 
 States Fish Commission, whose interesting work seems destined to 
 create an abundant food supply for uncounted millions in the near 
 future. 
 
 Mr. President, there are few objects of expenditure which do not perish 
 with the using. There are fewer still which survive the generation 
 which has created them. A few works of art; a few temples and pub- 
 lic buildings; a few dwel' Jigs, kept for curiosity rather than occupa- 
 tion; a few great libraries are all of the possessions of our day which 
 will survive a hundred years. The money you have appropriated for 
 the Army, the Na%y, the Post-Oflice, the courts, for the cost of legisla- 
 tion, for the diplomatic service, for pensions, will leave no trace behind 
 when the year in which it has been expended shall have passed. But 
 the works which this bill authorizes will remain, making their annual 
 and perpetual returns, instruments of commerce, of unien, and of peace, 
 so long as the waves run to the sea and the sea beats upon the shore. 
 
 O