The Railway Library, 1909. Various
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get twenty or twenty-five-foot channels, the box car is not in it in bulky freight. You have got to have depth of water.
"Some years ago I built six freight steamers on the Great Lakes and they were considered whales in their day. They could carry 3,000 tons. Today a lake steamer and a double channel through the Soo Canal carries 12,000 tons, and has two additional firemen and one deckhand, and that is all the additional crew.
"Sometime I would like to have the city council of the City of Seattle, if they had the time, run down to the head of Lake Superior, and see what is the greatest port in the matter of tons moved in the world. London was, and Duluth and Superior a few years ago were trailing along fifth or sixth place; but last year it took first place with the cities of the world, and it handled more tonnage than any other city. London had 30,000,000 tons and Duluth had 34,000,000.
"Now, to show the enormous importance of that load of tonnage, that tonnage that is greater than any other city in the world, I undertake to say, and do say, that there are not 1,000 people, men, women and children, connected directly or indirectly, with moving that traffic between the land and the water in both directions. There is such a thing as doing a very large business without a harbor at all.
SEATTLE SPIRIT WINS.
"Although as far as foreign commerce is concerned, as far as business is concerned, when we get to the seaside, we have to hand it over to the ships. It must be done. But the great business is done in the railroad yards. I would not be without the harbor—far from it, but don't feel that the harbor is going to make you, and don't feel as a gentleman in public life in Washington, when a friend of mine talking with him said, 'You won't get any more railways built along the policies you advocate.' 'Oh, well,' he said, 'we have got them, we have got them.' And he was a member of the house committee of interstate commerce, a rather dangerous statement for him to make."
AT TACOMA.
In his address at the banquet of the Tacoma Chamber of Commerce on the preceding evening (November 9), Mr. Hill dwelt especially on the intimate relation of railway and agriculture interests. Among other things he said:
"The question of terminals means a great deal to a railroad and it is getting to be more and more full of meaning every year. Some cities, and large cities, today have all the railroads they will ever get, simply on account of the difficulty in getting terminals. I think the Northern Pacific terminals today—I think to buy them on the entire system—would cost more money than to grade the whole road, and I do not know but what it would cost more than to grade and put the rails down. That is a condition and, remember, that you pay the freight.
WILL SOON NEED ALL THE WHEAT WE RAISE.
"Within a comparatively short time, I will say that within six years, I will go on record, you won't send many cargoes of wheat from Tacoma by sea, simply because the United States wants every bushel that will be raised within the United States to feed her own people, and will pay you more money for it. If they didn't pay you more money for it, it would go to the foreigner, but our own people will pay more money for it and take it somewhere and grind it into flour. If you look for greater avenues or greater economy in transportation, but it will cease to go out as wheat. I will give you an illustration and you can draw your own conclusions as well as I can: In 1882 the United Slates raised 504,000,000 bushels of wheat and we had 52,000,000 people and we exported somewhere between 175,000,000 and 200,000,000 bushels. Twenty-five years later, in 1907, we raised 634,000,000 bushels. We increased in that twenty-five years a little less than 25 per cent. in our wheat yield, or 130,000,000 bushels.
"Our population increased 64 per cent., and converging lines meet somewhere. Now, if we had 90,000,000 of people—and we have between 88,000,000 and 90,000,000 this year—and use six and a half bushels per capita, it would take 585,000,000 bushels for bread and seed. Professor Rogers, of the Minnesota Agricultural College, puts our consumption for bread and seed for the last few years at a trifle over or a trifle under seven bushels. I think he uses ten years for his average, and I use twenty-five to get an average of about six bushels and forty pounds, and I call it six and one-half bushels.
"On last year's crop, with 634,000,000, we have had about 59,000,000 bushels to sell and we sold about 80,000,000. What is the result? After the 15th of January wheat was higher in Minneapolis than it was in Chicago, even up to the first of August, and part of the time it was higher than it was in New York, because they wanted it to make a loaf of bread to feed our people at home.
"We have not the great margin that we used to have. The seed on last year's crop went down to 59,000,000 bushels and, if my figures are equal to Professor Rogers'—and he is a professor of agriculture in the Agricultural College and maybe he has more time to look these questions up more carefully—but with his figures we hadn't a bushel to sell. Suppose we had 60,000,000 bushels to sell, and we are increasing in population at the rate of 2,000,000 per year, our natural figure is between 1,300,000 and 1,400,000, and allow 700,000 for immigration, not eleven, twelve, thirteen or fourteen as we have been having, but say seven and by 1950 you will have in the United States, it figures out to be accurate, 208,000,000, but suppose we have 200,000,000, it might come by 1945, or 1947, or it might be in 1955, but about that time we will have 200,000,000 people, and if they use six and a half bushels per capita for bread and seed, it would take 1,300,000,000 bushels to feed them.
PROBLEM OF THE WHEAT.
"That is a little more than twice what you are raising today, and you haven't any new fields to put a new plow in. From 1882, when we raised 504,000,000 bushels of wheat, following that time more than half of Minnesota, all the northern part of Minnesota, was brought under the plow, all of North Dakota, all of South Dakota, all of the state of Washington and all of Oregon, except 3,000,000 or 4,000,000 bushels raised in 1882, more than half of California, two-thirds or three-quarters in Kansas and Nebraska, a large part, practically all of Oklahoma or the Indian Territory and a large part of Texas, and take what was raised in 1907 on the new fields that were opened up, any new territory after 1882, and you will find that it is approaching 300,000,000 bushels, but the increase in the whole country in that twenty-five years was only 130,000,000 bushels, so that the old fields fell off about 170,000,000 bushels.
"Are we increasing our yield per acre? By no manner of means. It has been a steady and uniform decline for the past thirty years. Now, we have as good wheat fields as there are anywhere on the continent, and they will be made better. I am not a disciple of Malthus, because Malthus was an honest man no doubt, but when he wrote he did not understand the science of modern agriculture or the adaptation of the soil or of the seed to the soil, or the commercial value of a correct analysis of the soil and the adaptation of the soil nor its commercial value as suited to the crop it is best fitted for. All these things we have learned, and while you are teaching your young people let me advise you that the school that is most entitled to your care and the school that will do the most for the state in every place and will turn out men and women as they have always in industry and intelligence and everything else that goes to make good citizenship, the school attended by the boy on the farm is certainly as good as the best.
"When your forests are cut and hauled away, and sold to somebody else you have then, and we will give you a perennial forest, a crop every year of great value too. But we ought to be able to take care of our land and we will. I have no doubt about the future. We will do what other people have been compelled to do. In 1790, Great Britain was down to fourteen bushels. We are down to thirteen and nine-tenths now, average. They took the question up and it was much easier for them to control, as far as territory was concerned, because the territory was small, in the hands of a few land owners, mostly rented, and they faced conditions compelling the land owner to sub-fallow, and fertilize and carry one crop year after year. They appointed a royal commission and that royal commission went to work jointly. We have a royal commission, too, and they are able men. One is a professor at Cornell and another is a publisher of books in New York, and another is Mr. Pinchot, who is doing a great deal of work, but he is overrun with the work he has to do. This commission is to report in time for the meeting of Congress. Now, bear this in mind, Great Britain started in 1790 trying to keep the people on the land. The landlord was afraid of the great drift of the agricultural people to the colonies