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6 MARINE, REVIEW. CHICAGO LAKE INTERESTS. ‘ WESTERN OFFICE, MARINE RevIEW, t No. 210 So. Water Street, CHICAGO, IIL, Sept. 10, In the REVIEW two or three weeks ago there was an article about handling grain on the Pacific coast as it is handled on the lakes. It can’t be done, you know. Grain cannot be shipped under the equator in bulk without heating, and so it is all sacked on the wheat field as it comes from the threshing machine... When in Portland, Ore., last winter, I went down to the river several times, and it seemed slow work the way the grain is handled. A steel ship had been two weeks taking on her cargo. She was a beauty, the handsomest sailing boat lever saw. It would take her eleven months to make the round trip from Liverpool. Neither ‘captain nor crew were in any hurry to get away. The lake dash in loading a boat would not have been appreciated by them after being afloat five months. In Portland, surrounded by a stoney country, it is surprising that the Streets are paved with stone that comes from Europe. They come as bal- Jast in the boats which take grain back. It is claimed that great coal fields exist along Puget sound. In that country of real estate sharks it is not well to believe too much, but if there are coal fields of any conse- quence there is certainly room for lake hustling in carrying coal to San Francisco. Fortunes will be made in that trade which is without prac- tical limit. The city council meets for the first time since its vacation next Mon- day, and the order from the war department to remove Canal street bridge will then be presented. Of course, nothing will be done. It is too much too expect of the city council. There is only one man in the council—his name is Cullerton—and Cullerton is against the removal of the bridge. There are sixty-seven other fellows, but they don’t count against the one. The corporation counsel will doubtless be ordered to fight the United States in its claim to have control of Chicago river, and the case will go into the courts. In five years it will be somewhere on the docket of the supreme court. All this time Canal street bridge will have been an ob- struction to nayigation and of no help to street travel. Mayor Cregier built a fitting monument to misrule when that bridge was constructed. Recently the marine interest here labored with great seriousness to defeat the use of government piers by private individuals, and Congress last winter passed a law prohibiting it. This summer the government has rebuilt the piers at the mouth of the harbor. ‘These piers used to be so that boats could tie up to them, but now being planked over there is nothing to fasten to. It is the only place in the harbor to make up tows, and while barges and steamers are waiting they can now find no place to go. Capt. Marshall, the government engineer, was appealed to and asked to drive piles every fifty feet where vessels might tie. He replied that the law prevented him from granting any such occupancy of government piers, but if the vesselmen wished to appeal to the secretary of war for permission it might be well todoso. This will now be done. Boats will be placed at a great disadvantage if they are driven away from the piers at the mouth of the harbor. ; F. W. Wheeler, the Bay City shipbuilder, has gone to New York in re- lation, it is said, to the new steamer for the Graham & Morton line. The contract has not been signed but the details are well arranged. © Mr. Graham takes exceptions to what I said last week about the City of Chicago. He construed it to mean that the City of Chicago was not sea- worthy. Nothing of the kind was intended. She is as strong and capa- ble of braving lake storms as she can be made. But the remarks were intended solely as a comparison between propellers and side-wheelers. It is generally admitted by all marine men that the propeller is the better sea boat, and that is the point I intended to make, whether I did so or not. The marine editor of the Buffalo Express at last admits that the rail- roads are waging war on the Erie canal. ‘The canal is doing all it can,” he says “but so low have freights been for the past few years,that there is not as many boats as there used to be. The state reports every week show a falling off in canal business, yet all the boats are busy.” In that can be found the secret of the course of the roailroads, “There are not as many boats as there used to be.” This tells the story. the trunk lines are carrying out a plan that is destined to weaken if not destroy their greatest competitor. As the business of the canal falls off, the war upon it in the legislature can be carried on with greater effect. Its appropriations can be cut down by less effort. By keeping rates at a starvation poiut the ~ building of uew boats is prevented. Thus it works both ways to the destruction of the Erie canal. It will be a bad day for the western farmer and for the trade of New York city if these tactics are successful. Rail- roads have never destroyed canal competition without making up for their - losses during the war of extirmination. No one who has watched the’ course of the railroads for several years past can doubt they are bent on » driving the Erie canal to the wall, even if it takes many years to do it, But it seems strange for a Buffalo paper to admit it. Earlier in the season they indignantly denied the truthfulness of an article to that effect. Send 75 cents to the MARINE REVIEW for a Binder that will hold 52 numbers. ‘in the City of New York and the City of Paris the engit boilers and coal take up 35 per cent. of the vessel, whi Kingston Harbor Matters. Special Correspondence to the MARINK REVIEW. KINGSTON, Ont., Sept. 10.—The propeller Hecla arrived here on Sat- urday morning with 51,000 bushels of rye. She entered the harbor very slowly but did not escape mishap. She went gently on Point Frederick shoal, where the Algonquin, Rosedale and others have rested in turn. She was lightered, when she floated off without sustaining the slightest dam- age. This shoal forms a ledge, on the extreme edge of which the boats strike, through keeping too close to the point shore. It is distinctly marked on the chart and surprise is expressed that mariners do not es- cape it. If range lights were placed in the harbor, however, the entrance would be perfectly safe. All the while men are busy removing shoals in the harbor. The water in this section is now eight inches lower than it was a month ago. It will begin to rise after the middle of this month. The Kingston and Montreal Forwarding Company had a busy time last week. Notwithstanding they have many of their bargesin the coal trade, they forwarded nearly 200,000 bushels of grain. The Montreal Transit Company is very busy also. The small vessels will have about another week’s idleness before the new barley is ready for shipment. When it comes in this class of vessels will get several loads to Oswego at pretty near as good rates as those re- ceived from Chicago here. It will be interesting to note the quantity shipped, because this will, in reality,be the first season after the operation of the McKinley bill. The pleasure steamers on the river have had a very short season—only about three months. When it is considered that some of these boats cost from $50,000 to $60,000, it can be seen that in order to pay they must do a rushing business while the season lasts. Other years the season was about four months. The tug Pier, built by the Union Dry Dock Company at Buffalo, for New York harbor work at a cost of $45,000, reached here on Saturday on her way to New York. She was in charge of Edward Gaskin, Supt. of the Union Iron Works, Buffalo, who met his cousin, Capt. John Gaskin, outside manager of the Montreal Transit Company, for the first time in his life. The meeting was an interesting one. Until the meeting they were total strangers. The 2,600 bushels of grain in the Valencia’s cargo that was damaged has been sold and stored here. The steamer Ontario, which left Oswego for Cuba some days ago, be- caffie disabled in astormi. She is now anchored in the Gulf of St. Law- rence, minus her rudder. Tugs will tow her to New York so that she can arrive in time to fill her contract with the Spanish government to carry the mails from Havanna. She must begin Sept. 12. No Need of a Convention, The Duluth News is still advocating the holding of a water- way convention before the next congress meets, but there doesn’t ‘seem to be as much ofan uprising in favor of the project as there ought to be if the necessity for it is as urgent as the News would have us believe. The Mining Journal’s idea, that we oughtn’t to be afflicted with any more conventions for the next few months than are positively unavoidable appears to be quite generally accepted as correct by the press.—Marquette Mining Journal. When everything is in readiness for proceedings before the New York legislature and Congress in favor of a radical enlarge- ment of the Erie canal,so as to provide a deep waterway between the lakes and seaboard it will be time enough to hold another convention of lake interests. Twenty-feet navigation throughout the entire chain of lakes is now assured beyond any doubt. There is no need of a convention to have Congress appropriate sufficient funds for the dredging that remains to be done in the | St. Clair and Detroit rivers,so as to have these channels conform to the dimensions of the new Sault lock and Hay lake channels. — Every fraction of a knot that is added to the speed oF the ocean flyers is attained at the sacrifice of a portion of the space’ allotted to freight. In some of the more recent vessels the encroachment of the machinery upon the cargo space is surpri ing.» Until recently 25 to 28 per cent. of the space within a vessel. was considered a proper allowance for the machinery, bu builders of the Teutonic allotted 43 per cent. of the roor motive power. The Scot, a swift new vessel pee ere oe for the South African service, gives up 35 per cent. of the: space to machinery.—American Shipbuilder, oo eee