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October, 1910 Influence of the Erie Canal Editor confidently reported that the New York MARINE REVIEW:--It is now State barge canal will be finished for the opening of the season of 1914,at least a year sooner than was at first supposed _to be pos- sible. rate, so that the payments to contractors are getting to be over $1,000,000 a month This sets the trans- portation people and heavy shippers to figuring the handling the new canal as a continua- tion. of. -the . lake route. Of: course, nobody is trying to adapt lake craft to the new conditions. The new barge must be cheaper and lighter than any- thing of that sort. It has always been a great point in canal traffic that the conveyance may be of much less cost than its cargo, which is not true of Jake craft to any extent and not often in. rail traffic, nor even of a lumber wagon sometimes. It is this fact more than. any other that will make it profitable to reship the lake cargoes at Buffalo, though back of that the hard work done in Buffalo for the canal was that the city interests alone, as a manufacturing center and not as a transfer point, demanded the cheap waterway. The through traffic will be welcome and taken care of, but that is an incident now. Buffalo is filling up with iron furnaces and manu- factories that are resultants of them, so it is now stated that a single iron concern here, with six furnaces for the production of pig iron, is figuring on a canal fleet, though it has not gone far The work is progressing ata rapid 'and increasing fast. on probable method of enough yet to settle the question whether | it will pay to build a fleet of the present-size boats for the three seasons that are between this and the new canal or to wait and put on a fleet of 2,000-ton barges for 1914. This will be done at any rate, the idea being that a steamer with five consorts is the proper figure. The old lake package-freight lines are not going to let the traffic on the new canal go'to individuals, though. They feel quite safe for the most part in their notion that they can control the traffic for the most part. They have the terminals, as nobody else has, and four of them, the New York Central, Erie, Lehigh Valley and Anchor line, main- tain canal fleets now, leasing the boats. They admit that the business is not satisfactory, but. they will stick to them and then expand them into 2,000-ton capacity as the new canal comes in. It will be easy to do that. It is figured that a barge-canal steamer capable .of towing five others, the fleet together carrying close to 12,000 tons, will cost TAE MarRINE REVIEW $40,000 and the barges a matter of half that amount.- The cost is too great for individuals to take up, unless they stand very close to the big rail lines, There are still bitter enemies of the barge canal down the State, who hold that it was a piece of folly to try to revive that traffic, though jealousy of Buffalo has animated much of the op- position. Still if the new barge will reduce the rate of freight one Halt, "it will give Buffalo and the route entire an advantage that no other interior point can approach. It is believed that' it will do just that thing. Buffalo is now receiving its ore from the lake steamer to the furnace direct and the Niagara river is steadily adding to its capacity. Two new smelting furnaces will be add- ed by the Rogers-Brown Iron Co. next season, there being close to 20 of them now on the Niagara Frontier. It is a great source of pride and dis- tress at the same time to note that the harbor side of Buffalo is already getting to be terribly smoky. The timid citizen is moving farther and -farther northward to get out of the line of smoke and the lake vessel. owner and business man gen- erally is rubbing his hands and asking for more smoke, for that means more business. The iron industry is not only here to stay, but it is growing fast and at the same time has merely begun to grow. ceiver a few years ago, the port is one of the four largest in that line on the lower lakes. Friends of the canal already see it beginning to restore the line of flourish- ing villages and cities that the old canal created during the first half of last century, but only to see a great part of them get out of step in late years and stand still, waiting for another boost. It has seemed that the State owed them something and now it is trying to pay that debt. It is true that the competition by rail is greater now than ever before, not only in actual rates, but in dispatch, which is a great matter. The lake lines state that they are carrying flour from Minneapolis to New York, by lake-and-rail, in six and one-half days, and that they can do it right along when conditions are normal. This means so much less of the delay that has always attended the rail traffic. Of late years the canal has been do- ing quite well. The fleet has been re- duced so that the traffic does not any longer make much showing as against the rail lines, but it has modified rates always and it always will, so long as there is a boat doing business. It has carried about 8,750,000 bushels of grain this season, which is an increase of over 1,000,000 bushels every year lately. With a stir attendant on getting ready From being a small ore re--: 405 for the enlarged ° canal, the traffic will grow steadily till that time. JoHN W. CHAMBERLIN. Contract for Car Ferry President James C. Wallace of the American Ship Building Co. closed contract on Sept. 17, with the Pere Marquette Railroad Co. for a car ferry to replace Pere Marquette No. 18, which foundered on Lake Michigan. As the contract calls for her delivery on Jan. 15 next she will be built on Lake Michigan and the yard at South Chicago has been opened for that pur- pose. It will be observed that under the terms of the contract this car ferry is to be built in practically ninety working days, which is a Very COn- siderable performance. The new..car ferry will be 350 ff. long, 56 ft. beam and 19% ft. deep. This is the third order for car ferries that has been placed in lake yards during the present year. The Ameri- can Ship Building 'Co. recently de- livered Marquette .& Bessemer No. 2 to the Marquette & Bessemer Dock & Navigation Co. at Conneaut. The Toledo Ship Building Co. is building a car ferry for the Ann Arbor Railroad Co. for service between Frankfort, Mich. and Manitowoc, Wis. She will be delivered in December. Car Ferry Design It is intimated that the railway companies operating car ferries in the open lake are arranging to have tightly fitting hoods placed on the hitherto open sterns of the vessels. This action is traceable to the recent loss of car ferry Pere Marquette No. 18 with the sacrifice of 28 lives. The subject of car ferry construction will also be discussed at the next annual meeting of the board of supervisors of the Steamboat Inspection Service in Washington next January. Con- cerning this C. H. Westcott, super- vising inspector with headquarters at Detroit, says: "In addition to the closely fitting hood on the stern I shall advocate the closing of all deadlights on the under side of the vessel, either by eliminating these openings altogether, or by placing over them a covering which shall extend to the height of the upper deck, the top being left open for ventilation. If deadlights on the outside are done away with, they could be replaced by an artificial system of ventilation in the hold of the steamer or by ventilator holes through the middle of the longitud-