SHALL THE SPECIAL INTERESTS RULE?
Kittle, William
Shall the Special Interests Rule? By WILLIAM KITTLE IX. Shall theSallroads Throttle the Panamn Canal ; 1. The Barred Gateway. By J. L. Mathews in the May, 1910, Everybody's 2. The Panama...
...Bridgeport, Connecticut, has nearly a hundred thousand population...
...A 6,000 tons capacity steamer loaded with oranges would cover this distance in nineteen days...
...As soon as the Aldrich-Payne tariff was passed and Congress had adjourned, "the Pacific railroads raised their rate on lemons from California to the Eastern markets, just one-quarter cent per pound...
...The continued rule of Special Interests at Washington will amply safeguard the railroad companies and deny to the millions of people in the Atlantic states, the Mississippi Valley and on the Pacific Coast the reduced living expenses which would result from cheap water transportation...
...Merchants were short-sighted enough to accept the low rates and as a result, the ships went to the scrap heap or were sold for service in other waters...
...And the railroad rates went back to where they were before the steamship line was projected...
...The battle in Congress for the present projected water way to be dug and owned by the United States showed how strong the railroad interests were...
...ADMIRAL EVANS estimates that the Panama Canal, when completed in the summer of 1916, will have cost approximately $400,000,000...
...A ship of 6,000 net tons cargo would take as many tons of freight as 240 freight cars of twenty-five ton capacity...
...Will they, in Congress, through an Aldrich, an Elkins, or a Cannon, dictate the policy of the canal and control the entire transportation system...
...In Philadelphia, twenty-four per cent, of the water front belongs to the Pennsylvania Railway, twenty-two per cent, to the Reading Railway, and eight per cent, to the Baltimore and Ohio Railway Company...
...Shall the restrictive power of any great Special Interest own or control the gateways of foreign commerce, destroy or limit the coastwise trade, fix at will the rates on domestic commerce nullify all the immense advantages that might come from the Panama Canal, and control Congress and the Presidency itself, for the "Profit of Privilege...
...By J. L. Mathews in the May, 1910, Everybody's 2. The Panama Canal...
...Giving a careful statement of the present freight rates from California to New York, Admiral Evans proves that water transportation via the Panama Canal at one-fourth the transcontinental freight rates, "would pay all interest, charges, expenses, and give the owners a good profit...
...John L. Mathews states: "Her swelling commerce has grown from almost nothing at all to pass, first, Genoa, then Marseilles, then London itself, so that it now ranks second to New York...
...This railway (of the House of Morgan) controls all the docks and operates the only steamboats allowed to land there...
...New York City owns its shore line and has built steel and concrete sheds "on individual piers which are leased on long terms at enormous prices to individual companies...
...Admiral Evans states: "The Pacific Coast from San Diego to Alaska, has many fine ports or harbors where one might expect to find through municipal ownership of water-front property, docking locations for new steamship lines...
...Besides rotary cranes, there are also 667 traveling cranes ranging from two tons to 150 tons each in lifting power...
...The time for rail freights across the continent varies from 20 to 60 days...
...They can be made so high as to prohibit the coast trade between the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards...
...5 per ton...
...Hamburg, Germany, has spent a hundred million dollars on her harbor during the past twenty years...
...For ccean steamships there are eighteen miles of crane-equipped quays, and for river barges, twenty-five miles...
...The California lemon growers had sent to Washington a delegation to secure that "Protection" to American industry...
...He states: "Decade after decade, the great east-and-west railroad systems opposed and prevented the building of the canal...
...Year after year, independent steamboatmen come looking for a chance to land—and find the harbor closed...
...125 per car of twenty-five tons...
...When they were started, railroad rates across the continent were cut down to such a figure that the steamers could not be operated...
...In 1909, the lemon growers of California induced Congress to raise the duty on lemons one-quarter of a cent a pound...
...It is a manufacturing center of automobiles, sewing-machines and other products...
...A ship of sixteen knots speed, such as those now used in the West Indies trade, would make the trip in just fourteen days...
...The distance from Los Angeles to New York via the Panama Canal is, in round numbers, 5,000 miles...
...Besides high toll rates at the canal, there are other ways by which the railroads can nullify its advantages...
...Hamburg has prepared a free port surrounded by a floating wall, embracing many islands and many natural and artificial channels...
...The water surface of a dozen huge basins is more than 1,250 acres...
...All the shore line of Bridgeport Harbor except forty-eight feet is owned or controlled by .the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railway...
...Admiral Evans cites the following: "The Panama Railroad once built steamers to run in connection with the road across the Isthmus of Panama...
...By Rear Admiral Robley D. Evans in the January, February and March, 1910, Humpton...
...Ship yards, dry docks, everything a port needs is found in the basins of Hamburg...
...The freights north are controlled by one road and those south by another...
...They can advance the plausible argument of the present toll rate of $2 per ton through the Suez Canal which pays 20 per cent, dividends on the investment...
...The city owns about a mile and a half, "divided into tiny parcels at the foot of each street, some thirty feet wide, and there is scarcely a place for a wharf...
...Their immense crop of lemons had been hauled by the railroads, presumably at a good profit, to the Atlantic seaboard...
...4 Will the Railroads Throttle the Panama Canal...
...The toll rates on the Panama Canal can be made directly in the interest of the railroads instead of the public interests...
...and when the work is completed, the action of these same railroads will determine whether we are, as a nation, to benefit by it or not...
...Refrigerating ships are now in use all over the world...
...it is difficult to find a single American freight ship or line of ships, sailing from New York that is not controlled in some way by a railroad corporation...
...When they come this year, they will find the railroad fencing and filling eleven acres of the anchorage ground—over the united protest of Bridgeport, but with the connivance of the legislature of Connecticut...
...They knew what its competition would mean in the reduction of their freight rates...
...These steamers were to carry freight from New Orleans to Colon...
...Menace of the Railroads BUT will the railroad owners, presidents and traffic managers permit the toll rates through the canal to give the advantage to this cheap water transportation...
...3. Why the Panama Canal May Be a Pari Business Venture...
...The Barred Gateway The railroad companies are also acquiring control of nearly all the dock frontage on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States...
...but most of such property is now in the hands of railroad corporations...
Vol. 2 • July 1910 • No. 30
