The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

8 MARINE REVIF,/ Ww. MARINE REVIEW. DEVOTED TO THE LAKE MARINE AND KINDRED INTERESTS. JOHN M. MULROONEY, F. M. BARTON, HoMER J. Carr, - - - Associate Editor and Manager Chicago Office, 210 South Water Street. Published every Thursday at No. 510 Perry-Payne Building, Cleveland, O. SUBSCRIPTION--$2.00 per year in advance. Convenient binders Senb post paid, 75 cents. Advertising rates on application. | Proprteros. The books of -the United States treasury department contain the names of 3,510 vessels, measuring 1,063,063.90 tons in the lake trade. In classification of this fleet the lakes have more steamboats of 1,000 to 2,500 tons than the combined ownership of this class of vessels in all other sections of the country. The classification is as follows: Class. Number. Tonnage. Stearn vesselsiee Aig HA et ieie see ateahboee iers5e7, 652,922.25 Water vessels: 2.40 tvscstaees Nshekbea bassemesent 1,272 328,655.96 Canale pOas -ccuscr.ccecwes coca on Pee hae 'Ot aeSE 657 67,574.90 WFAR CES ar enga. pen ccmadnectanettcoade vedas cteigcaneetaeen' 54 13,910.09 POA oie) ee osc et ce nwraneeeresieresa ke us, 510 1,063,063.90 According to the report of William W. Bates, United States com- missioner of navigation, 46 per cent of the new tonnage of the country was built on the lakes during 1889. This is a percentage greater than the work of the Atlantic coast and western rivers combined, and almost equal to the whole work on the Atlantic and Pacific coast. In 1890 the tonnage built on the lakes is but very little less than that built on the Atlantic and alt coasts. Tonnage built on the lakes during the past five years was as ollows : : No. of boats. Net Tonnage, DOO! reir stees eestigs ce ohaeatputces sandereesaws 5 20,400.54 DOS nies teatime shoe ce deter meee eesse es Meee 152 56,488.32 MOOS! ap castnce ote eecns de ET aoa Masee ete dens Fe 222 . 101,102.87 MOOQHs Mshacecsttd Bvirag we ddaseck Mee tone sonet app 225 107,080.30 TOGO Ss esc Posi tie Eaten bee bar aees waco 218 108,515.00 AOL Ale festa ce vse ee a aeoee ee eeceetns go2 393,597-03 St. Mary's Falls and Suez canal.trafic: Number of boats through St. Mary's Falls canal in 1890, 234 days of navigation, 10,557; tonnage, net registered, 8,454,435. Number of boats through Suez canal during 1890, full year, 3,389; tonnage, net registered, 6,890,014. Entered at Cleveland Post Office as Second-class Mail Matter. In the February number of the Engineering Magazine of New York, Lieut. Col. W. R. King of the army engineer corps answers the article entitled "Worthless Government Engineer- ing." which appeared in the January number of the same maga- zine and was written by George Y. Wisner, an engineer in charge of harbor work at the mouth of the Mississippi and in Texas. This is the same article to which Col. William Ludlow of Detroit replied briefly but very forcibly in the MARINE RE- VIEW, issue of Jan. 14, and it would seem that 'unless Mr. Wis- ner calls to his assistance some of the other civil engineers throught the country who are known to entertain hostile feelings toward the army corps, he will find, even in the matter of con- troversy through magazine articles@that he has undertaken a very big job in publicly criticising the work of the army engin- eers. It is probably known to most readers of the REVIEW who have been brought into close relations witharmy engineers through the large amount of river and harbor work under way on the. lakes for several years past, that one class of civil engineers in this country has on several occasions, in convention and other- wise, denounced the present improvement system of conducting river and harbor work. Among other things, it has been claimed that the system is unfair to the civil engineers of the country, that the work was turned over to the engineer corps for the pur- pose of providing employment for an idle portion of the army officers and that these officers are trained for fortification work and not for harbor work. In every case agitation of the subject received little attention outside of the engineers themselves, who were charged with becoming restive under large appropriations from Congress each year in the distribution of which they could have no part. They were met also with such fortifications as the great integrity of the army officers, low salaries in the corps and an economical managemant of everything pertaining to its affairs. For these reasons, mainly, little attention was paid to the several efforts of the civil engineers to bring the subject be- fore Congress, and it is not probable that another movement, of which Mr. Wisner's paper.is: thought to be a forerunner, will be of more importance than its'predecessors. His assertions are of _a loose nature, without dates, names or anything specific, and they are ably refuted in the replies referred to, but not least among them is the charge "that the managers of some technical journals do not give the matter the support they should, for fear of losing their columns of profitable government advertising." Mr. Wisner would not have made this statement if he had inyes- tigated the question of "profit" in government advertising. Le gal rates are demanded by the government in its advertising contracts and some of the best newspapers of the country réfuse the business on account of its unprofitableness. ie At the hearing granted to representatives of the Detroit deep waterways convention by the river and harbor committee of the House and the commerce committee of the Senate, Gen. Poe was again called upon for an opinion as to the possibility of a reduction of the level of the lakes by deepening their connect- ing channels. Although it is a cardinal principle in engineering -- 5 that the system of dredging at one point in a body of water con-_ necting others of different levels and depositing the material -- thus taken out at another place in the same body of water does not change the surface level in any case, this question has been raised many times and will probably come up again at regular intervals in the future. A 'Toledo man, Samuel R. Backus, raised the question this time, and it has been given many col- umns of space in daily newspapers on the lakes. With a great deal of patience, however, Gen. Poe has answered all questions -- @ regarding the subject, on the basis that one of the very first re- quirements when deepening the bars in a channel connecting pools having different levels, is that sufficient of the cross-sec- tion at the point of deepening must be obstructed to compensate for the increase due to the excavation. The excavation at Lime- Kilns crossing, he says, may be taken as an example. The stone removed from the excavation was deposited abreast of it, in a part of the channel that was not likely to be required. The contracts for improving Hay lake channel provide for the neces- sary dams to maintain the volume of discharge as at present. At St. Clair Flats canal proper precautions were taken to main--- tain the volume of dischar ge. At Lime-Kilns crossing the course taken was hardly necessary, because the entire fall from the head of the improvement to Lake Erie does not exceed three in- ches; hence a rise of that extent in the level of Lake Erie would entirely drown out the whole Lime-Kiln crossing improvement. But it was most convenient and economical to deposit the stone in accordance with the principle referred to. THE aggregate of estimates for river and harbor improve- ments recommended by the United States engineers is about $60,000,000. It is questionable whether the house will support © a bill for over $15,000,000, but even at this figure the lakes may expect fair treatment from the river and harbor committee. The committee is disposed to favor only measures of urgent and most -- deserving nature and-on this account lake interests need enter- tain no fear. Big projects may receive recognition from the committee for small appropriations for the work of a single year, with engineers empowered to make contracts for the entire work, and in this way $15,000,000 may do more than double that amount under the old rule. THE well-read man whose opinion carries weight and value is ever ready to examine standard books of reference. Strange as it may seem on the other hand the man whose education is limited and who is therefore in need of all the information he can gather, is bigoted enough to claim that he knows all there is to know about his business.