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River Transportation Increases Irresistible Economic Forces Advance Use of Great Inland Water- ways—Need More and Better Terminal Facilities with Rail Connection ‘ ORK on the slackwatering of a great medium of transpor- tation—the Ohio river—prac- tically is completed, and the 900 miles of this stream from Pittsburgh to Cairo, Ill., are available for year- round movement of a variety of freight. The next step is reaping the benefits of direct movement and low transportation costs from use of this waterway is building up of adequate shipping facilities—the es- tablishment of barge lines and ter- minals. Progress along these lines is getting under way gradually. It is not to be inferred, however, that traffic over the Ohio already is not of considerable proportions. In the Pittsburgh harbor alone are some 89 steamboats, 60 smaller towboats, 2000 barges, 24 sand dredges and 10 dipper dredges. The freight move- ment over the Ohio river in recent years has exceeded 20,000,000 tons annually, while shipments over the Monongahela river, a tributary, have been in excess of 25,000,000 tons. Traffic in coal, sand and gravel, how- ever, comprises 85 per cent of the By W. G. Gude total freight of these two streams, and these commodities are moved over comparatively short distances. Iron and steel products are the lead- ing items in the through movement from ‘Pittsburgh to the South and Southwest. The bulk of this traffic is carried on by privately owned lines. Considerable expansion remains to be done to establish transportation facili- ties that will extend to the small and large shippers of other products the benefits of a dependable river route. Included in such developments, proponents of wide-scale utilization of the Ohio maintain, is the establish- ment of joint rail and river rates and equitable divisions of revenue between all-rail carriers and barge lines hav- ing river-rail terminal facilities. Anticipate Great Future Growth Looking into the future, river men see a tremendous growth in traffic. Speaking before the Ohio Valley Im- provement association at its annual convention in Pittsburgh last fall, the prediction was made by Lachlan Mac- leay, secretary of the Mississippi Val- ley association at St. Louis, that great barge line tows carrying 10,000 tons of wheat from the Middle West on port-to-port rates from St. Louis to Pittsburgh would be meeting the competition of the present grain movements by the Great Lakes. These, together with barge cargoes of cotton and sugar from the South, he said, would form the return move- ment in exchange for the cargoes of iron and steel products and cement down the Ohio to the Mississippi. “We want to see the sugar and cotton and rice and lumber from Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas come into the river ports of Cincin- nati and Pittsburgh for transport by rail to the centers of consumption and manufacture,” he continued. ‘We be- lieve that by this means cotton can be moved to the mills of New Eng- land at a rate saving which will en- able New England mills to meet the competition of the world. This is no idle dream and its reasonableness is being proved by the operations at present on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers from New Orleans and Mem- First Tow of Steel Products Down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers—October 1921—by Jones & Laughlin 44 MARINE REVIEW—June, 1929