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24. | MARINE. REVIEW AND MARINE RECORD. BARGE CANAL PROPOSITION. Andrew Carnegie Warmly Indorses the Project and Gen. Greene makes a ' Splendid Address. ' An enthusiastic meeting on the 1,000-ton barge canal was held under the auspices of the Merchants' Exchange at the Ellicott club, Buffalo, recently. Several hundred persons of prominence were present. Andrew Carnegie sent a letter warmly endorsing the enlargement of the Erie canal and Gen. Francis V. Greene, police commissioner of New York, made an earnest plea for it. Mr. Carnegie's letter was as follows: Mr. Leonard Dodge, president Buffalo Merchants' Exchange, Buffalo, N. Y.:--Yours of April 16 received. You do well to honor those who have secured the right to the people of New York to decide whether they are to abandon or improve the waterway which New York state, among all the states, possesses from the lakes to the sea. 'There never was a time when, in my opinion, it would have been good policy to give up this unique advantage over our sister states upon the Atlantic seaboard, but if ever a day has existed when this would have been wise, the day has come when it would be suicidal. We have today such a community of interest among the leading railway systems, New York Central and Pennsylvania, as to render it more profitable for their interests to divert the traffic from the east to the west to the ports in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, pushing New York state aside, because these ports give a longer water haul and a shorter rail haul for the traffic than New York state, from its position, is able to do. Before the day of mergers, New York railroads would com- pete our traffic against this physical disadvantage. Today it is no longer to their interest to do so. The managing officers of the merger lines naturally send the traffic where it can be handled at the cheapest cost to them, while the loss is made up to the line that might have got a share of the traffic in other ways. With the proposed 1,000-ton barge canal, New York state, New York, Buffalo and other cities along the line and adjacent to it would have cheaper transportation by one half and even in many cases by two-thirds, than without this canal could ever be obtained from railroads. With the canal in operation, of course, the rail- roads will put down their rates, which otherwise they would maintain. I have called attention to the fact that the Carnegie Steel Co. has provided for a first expenditure of $12,000,000 for man- ufacturing works upon Lake Erie, not far from Buffalo. You see that the Lackawanna Iron & Steel Co. has erected works at Buffalo. The reason why the western part of New York state became such a magnet for attracting capital was, in great part, because of the Erie canal, and the certainty that New York state would never forego the advantages she had over her competitors, but would enlarge that canal at any cost. I expected that the 9-ft. improvement would be secured, and even with that improve- ment, we had determined to place a line of boats upon it from our works at Conneaut, by which we would have taken the iron and steel throughout New York state and to New York, and _ thence without trans-shipment to all points in the east. Believe me, gentlemen, New York state has only to provide a waterway capable of taking 1,000-ton barges through, to meet successfully the threatened triumph of Pennsylvania over her in population. You know that New York state, as a_ state, ex- - cluding Greater New York, has been losing population steadily as compared with Pennsylvania. So it will continue to do, and it is only a question of a few decades when Pennsyl- vania will be again the Empire state as she once was. ihe only means that 1 know of that will retard: 'this, and perhaps prevent it, is to obtain for New York state what Pennsylvania nor any other state can by any possibil- ity acquire--a deep and wide waterway from lake to ocean. 'The interest upon $100,000,000 is a mere bagatelle to pay for this. The $3,coo,cco will never be felt against the annual increase of wealth and population. Even if the waterway were operated at cost and yielded no profit, its incidental advantages would give us the largest dividends on record. ANDREW CARNEGIE. GEN. GREENE'S ADDRESS. Gen. Greene's address was thorough, he saying among many ° things: "Those who believe in the commercial supremacy of the state of New York and desire to see it continued may well con- gratulate themselves that, after so many years of earnest and determined effort and in the face of so many difficulties, the' opportunity is now offered to the voters of the state to decide whether an adequate waterway shall be maintained across the state from the lakes to the ocean. Whenever: the opportunity has been offered to them the people of the state have always voted in favor of the maintenance and suitable enlargement of the Erie canal; and. they have inserted in the constitution a provis- ion that the canals shall not be sold, leased or otherwise disposed of, but shall remain the property of the state and under its man- agement forever. There is every reason to believe that the people will vote in favor of the proposition now to be submitted to them, provided it is properly presented for their consideration. On the other hand it will be vigorously opposed in certain quar- ters, and to counteract this an active campaign in its favor must be carried on. "It should be noted, as was clearly pointed out when the [May a1, vote was taken in the senate, that the question passed upon by the legislature was: 'Shall this bill pass and ought the same to re- ceive the sanction of the people?' And this question was de- cided in the affirmative by both branches of the legislature. It is fortunate that it was not a political measure and was not passed by a party vote. The representatives of both houses of the two great cities at the opposite ends of the state voted solidly in favor of it, and with the aid of certain votes from the interior it was passed by a large majority, but there were negative votes from both parties. The question 1s, therefore, in no sense a partisan one; nor is it directly connected with national, state Or munici- pal politics; it 1s a question solely of the business prosperity df the state of New York and whether it is wise to borrow a large stim of money for the purpose of enlarging the canal, in the be- lief that such enlargement will restore to the state a great vol- ume of trade which the railroads have diverted to other states. he estimated cost of the project, as determined by the engineers of the committee of which I had the honor to be chairman in 1899, was $62,000,000. Certain changes were made in the plans by the state engineer and the advisory board of 1900 by which the dimensions of the canal were increased, and the Oswego canal, with 12 ft. depth, was included in the estimate, and the total cost brought up to $82,000,000. The increase in the cost of labor and materials during the last two years led to a re- vision of the engineers' estimates during the last winter, by which they were increased more than $10,000,000 for labor and materials and to provide ageinst unforeseen contingencies, and by more than $9,000,000 additional for a 12-ft. depth on Champlain canal and for certain improvements at the Hudson river terminus; thus bringing the total cost up to $101,000,000; and this is the amount authorized to be raised by the issue of bonds in the bill which will come before the people for their decision in Novem- ber next. WILL COST LESS THAN $I01,000,000. "As to these estimates, I think I may say that everyone who has been connected with them has taken warning by the mistakes made in underestimating the cost of the 9-ft. improvement pro- jected in 1895, and everyone has determined in this case to pro- tect his reputation by being absolutely on the safe side; the esti- mates in all probability are in excess of what the work would cost under the present prices of labor of materials; but there is every reason to believe that before the proposed enlargement can possibly be completed there will be a very considerable reduction in the prices of labor and materials, and that the work will cost; very considerably less than the estimate of $101,000,000. It is, therefore, perfectly safe to figure on not exceeding $101,000,000 as the cost of this great improvement. "This is a great sum, but we live in a great state, of mighty resources, both in population and wealth. It is less than 2 per cent. of the total: assessed valuation of the state in 1901, and probably not more than 1% per cent. of the real value of the prop- erty in the state. It is about equal to the cost of the govern- ment of the city of New York for one year; it involves an ex- penditure about one-third as great relatively to the resources of the state as that which the state incurred when it first undertook the construction of the Erie canal; it is about twice what a sin- gle railroad corporation has determined to expend for the privi- lege of carrying unbroken trains by tunnel into New York and Brooklyn in place of distributing passengers by ferries from the Jersey shore; it is less than the projects to which the city of New York has already committed itself, or shortly will com- mit itself, to improve the facilities for transportation of passen- gers within the city limits. While no such vast sum should be wasted in an unwise project, yet if the project be wise and proper, the cost is so easily within the resources of the state that the financial problem need not alarm even the most timid. The total sum, moreover, is not to be raised at a single time. It is to be spread over a term of years and will be obtained from the sale of bonds which will be paid off during a term of fifty years; the total charge for sinking fund and interest at the rate of 3 per cent. being about $3,900,000 a year. 'This is, indeed a bag- atelle--always provided the expenditure is a wise one--for a state whose citizens own $6,000,000,000 of -property, it amounts to but a fifteenth part of 1 per cent. a year. Finally, the money is not to be raised by direct taxation, but under the wise legisla- oe of the last two legislatures it will be provided by indirect axation. HOW IT WILL, IMPROVE COMMERCE. ens advantages of the enlarged canal are that it will pro- vide a transportation route across this state which, owing to the topography of the country, is impossible across any other state between the lakes and the ocean; on which route the cost of transportation can be reduced to a figure far below that which 1s now possible or apparently will be possible at any time in the future on the railroads, and which will bring back to the state the transportation and handling and sale within its borders of certain stable products, such as breadstuffs, which by means of differentials. among the railroads have been diverted to other ports on the gulf, on the middle Atlantic and on the New Eng- land coast. The freight paid on such products, when carried by the canal, will be paid to citizens of our own state; the profit in handling and selling these articles will be paid to the mer- chants of our two great cities; the low rates which will prevail