is through business from Kansas City and St. Louis, or from rail lines coming into St. Louis and Kansas City. We had some local business, of course, but having taken the position that cities desiring water rates must provide the connecting link between the freight and the water, we did not strongly solicit local business, because it costs too much money to take that freight on.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you contemplate also connection with railroad tracks at these towns?

Mr. MACKIE. When that is desirable. Jefferson City does contemplate that, and Hermann has a railroad track. At points other than terminal points that would be necessary in order to deliver freight in loaded cars at some industry in that city which is located off the river. Jefferson City contemplates that because she has industries located some distance back from the river. I think the town of Hermann would not provide that connection, because every industry in Hermann now hauls freight from the factory down to the railroad station or switching tracks, and by going 150 feet farther across the track they could deliver it to our boats.

Mr. BORLAND. Hermann is below the junction of the Osage and Gasconade Rivers with the Missouri and there is traffic on those rivers?

Mr. MACKIE. That is particularly true of the Gasconade. There is a boat line operating from Hermann, Mo., up the Gasconade as far as they can go with 2 feet of water. That line has its headquarters in Hermann, and for many years it delivered freight coming from river points or nonrail points to the Missouri Pacific Railroad on the side of the track there.

Mr. SWITZER. How do you operate your boats?

M. MACKIE. They are day boats.

Mr. SWITZER. How long does it take to make the trip?

Mr. MACKIE. We allow three days running downstream—that is, running in the day and tying up at night. Once in a while we run a few hours in the night where the river has been improved.

Mr. SWITZER. In the event you think it advisable to build up a packet traffic, in what time would you make it? Suppose you had a passenger traffic.

We

Mr. MACKIE. With a 43-mile current it is not advisable to go at full speed downstream. We run as high as 16 miles per hour. do not go any faster because there is too much danger of damage. Mr. BORLAND. Suppose you had a 6-foot channel and shore lights properly established, what would be the time?

Mr. SWITZER. Do you think that there could be built up a packet traffic?

Mr. MACKIE. Yes, sir; I am sure of that. In fact, we anticipate a little competition, which we welcome, of course, in local trade. There is a movement on foot now to handle local freight from local points, but we do not consider it desirable with through business on a long haul

The CHAIRMAN (interposing). You could make it in less than 48 hours, couldn't you?

Mr. MACKIE. Yes, sir; the distance is less than 400 miles. We have made many trips at a speed of 16 miles per hour, and that is not going at full speed.

Mr. BLAND. Some statistical information has been compiled showing the total tonnage in 20 counties bordering on the river.

Mr. MACKIE. Yes, sir. In working on the question of the possible tonnage along the river, that is, in the local territory between Kansas City and St. Louis, we were able to get considerable help from the State Board of Agriculture. They took it as a basic figure that in the Missouri Valley, or in the counties bordering on the Missouri River, there is produced each year for shipment, or of surplus products, an average of 1 ton per acre per year. On that basis there would be considerably in excess of a million tons of products for shipment, which would be local business between Kansas City and St. Louis. Now, as to the matter of internal terminals. we have already done a great deal. We handle wheat in bags from landings along the river. For the first time in many years the farmer producing wheat and rye and other grains has been able to ship his products to a central market, which in this case is St. Louis, and get the market price of the grain on the day of arrival-that is, the market price for his particular grade of grain, without having to forfeit 5 cents or 6 cents per bushel to the local buver. There are local buyers of grain in all of those districts, and for years the farmers have been accustomed to sell to the local buyers. Now, they tell us that they have been getting from 5 to 6 cents per bushel more for their wheat by reason of being able to use our line and to get their wheat to St. Louis at the water rate, which is 20 per cent less than the railroad rate, that being the rate which we apply everywhere.

The farmers have been encouraged to band their neighbors together and build warehouses on the banks of the river, and they accumulate as high as 10,000 bags of wheat at a landing. That wheat can be loaded on a barge without delaying the boats, and the loaded barge can be taken up next day and carried to St. Louis. In order to further that business and to be able to handle live stock, which is produced in large quantities by the farmers in those districts, and in order to be able to handle apples, which also means a considerable tonnage, we have built some small barges of 200 tons capacity, which we can profitably afford to drop at landings and allow them to lay over to be loaded, without delaying the movement of our boats at all, thereby eliminating terminal expenses at that point. If we leave a barge at a farm landing, the farmers will load it with the help of their neighbors, and where it would cost us considerable to load the barge, in that way we get it loaded for nothing.

Mr. LIEB. Is much shipping done out of Hermann now?

Mr. MACKIE. Not a great deal by river. We have gotten into Hermann and we have handled carloads of shoes and wine from there. Mr. LIEB. Do they operate a packet line there?

now.

Mr. MACKIE. No, sir; not to St. Louis. There is a line projected We handled one or two carloads of wine at Hermann. We went down there and rented a house on the banks of the river, and they put two or three cars of wine there. We stopped there and loaded it on and handled it for 20 per cent less than the rail rate. However, there was soon an appreciable reduction in the volume of business done on the rail line out of Hermann, and an investigation showed that we were doing the carrying. Immediately there was a reduction of 20 per cent in the railroad rate, and then the shippers came to us and asked what we would do it for. They contracted

with the railroad for a year. However, the shoe factory has not been treated that way and it is still patronizing us.

Mr. BORLAND. You will profit by recent legislation of Congress which requires railroads to make through rates with water carriers? Mr. MACKIE. Yes, sir. The chairman asked me if we had had trouble with rail lines. We are considered as a connecting carrier, but we had trouble in one case. We have a tremendous flour and grain business at Kansas City, and a considerable amount of it goes to export. Some flour is routed via Virginia ports, Norfolk and Newport News, from Kansas City. It is shipped on a through rate from Kansas City of 22 cents per 100 pounds, and the rate is divided, the western line getting 9 cents and the eastern line getting 13 cents per 100 pounds. We asked the eastern or Virginia line to join us in a through rate, they accepting 13 cents on that basis, but they wanted 15 cents from us. We insisted that we were entitled to receive the same treatment that was accorded the western railroad lines, and went before the Interstate Commerce Commission with it. The result was that the joint rate was ordered.

The CHAIRMAN. What is the name of that case?

Mr. BORLAND. That is case No. 7002, the Kansas City Missouri River Navigation Co. v. Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Co. et al., decided May 11, 1915 (34 I. C.C., p. 67). The reference is found on page 76 of our brief.

Under recent legislation of Congress water carriers can force through rates and through routes with railroads, and this company has demonstrated that it can be done.

Mr. MACKIE. Yes, sir. That is the only case that went before the Interstate Commerce Commission. We know that the volume of our business is small. It was this year 32,000 tons moving a distance of 400 miles, which means a ton mileage of 12,800,000. But we know that the business is getting bigger every year, and we know that in this year 1915 we have established a service which enables us to go to the shipper and solicit his business purely from the standpoint of service. For the first time in our history we have been able to ask them to give us their business because we know we are fortified in that way and that there is no limit

The CHAIRMAN (interposing). You think that a tonnage of 32,000 in so short a time, where there was nothing before, is doing well, but I have a river in my State and partly in my district that has a better record. In the 1914 bill we had an appropriation of $47,000, I think, for it. That was the entire amount appropriated for the improvement of the river and its needs recommended by the engineers. Members on the floor of the House criticized the appropriation very severely, but the tonnage on that river is more than twice what you have on that stretch of the Missouri.

Mr. MACKIE. I would have to say to you just what I said some time ago, that if our project is going to stand or fall on the basis of the tonnage we are moving to-day, we have nothing to say. All of the territory served or that can be served contiguous to the Missouri River may be served just as Kansas City is now served. It is a tremendous territory, and the estimate of 10,000,000 tons through Kansas City is only the tonnage from Kansas and South Nebraska and has nothing to do with the tonnage that moves from farther west. So far as the

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prospective tonnage for the line or all the tonnage in the territory from which we can draw our total tonnage if we are diligent enough is concerned, that is so great that we do not worry about it.

The CHAIRMAN. I should hope that when the improvements are made, you would not have a monopoly of that transportation.

Mr. MACKIE. I will give you Mr. Dickey's statement on that. He has been making that statement for a long time, and I think I can give it in his own words. He says that we are now in the peculiar position of being one river line that would welcome competition. We are doing everything we can to help everybody else. I have in my particular office thousands of letters, or copies of letters, that we have written during the last five years telling people fully and thoroughly everything that we have been able to learn about inland-water navigation.

The CHAIRMAN. I think you are doing a good work there and that your example should be helpful to others.

Mr. BORLAND. You employ a marine architect to design boats of the best types, do you not? You have a man of that kind employed? Mr. MACKIE. Yes, sir. Before we ever started to build a boat, we sent an engineer all over the inland waters of the United States, and I have been over them twice or three times myself. I have talked with the men in overalls, asking them how it was done. I want to say that it is startling to think of the lack of information that we were able to get on the subject of inland navigation, and I am not bragging when I say that practically everything we know we learned ourselves. We have made or taught our own pilots and our engineers at our own expense, and it has cost us something, but we now have a young aggressive working organization that I am glad to be at the head of. It is composed of men who will work 24 hours per day, if necessary, in order to keep the boats running. That is a little bit typical of the Kansas City spirit.

There were two or three things touched on by Judge Bland that I would like to touch on.

The chairman asked why we had no larger capacity. I would like to go before the board of directors that I happen to serve and get one hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand dollars for new equipment. When we started navigation on the Missouri River, we were informed by people all over the inland waters that to attempt to get more than 400 horsepower on 33 feet of water would be to attempt the impossible and that we would be wasting our money. We have 600 horsepower on 34 feet of water, and we have succeeded within the last year in designing with our working organization a craft of 1,000 horsepower with 3 feet of water. Four hundred horsepower on the Missouri River in a power boat will move 400 tons of freight up stream at the rate of 5 miles per hour. It will move more freight at a slower rate of speed, of course, but we want to carry high grades of freight as well as the low grades, because it is more profitable. Mr. LIEB. Do you have steel bottoms or wood?

Mr. MACKIE. Nothing but steel. Judge Bland would not give us a pound of freight on anything but a steel bottom, nor would anybody else. A 600-horsepower boat will carry 600 tons of freight up the Missouri River at 5 miles per hour, or have a ton-mile capacity of 3,000 tons. You can work it out anyway you please, but that is the unit.

Now, with a 1,000-horsepower boat, we can move 1,000 tons of freight, and the only difference in the cost of moving that 1,000 tons of freight over the 600 tons would be the cost of the additional fuel required. For the additional 400 horsepower we would have no additional wages to pay and no additional food to buy. That is where the profit in inland water navigation will be, that is, in getting up the tonnage per trip, and that requires a permanent channel of the right depth. If we should have built five or six of those boats two years ago, of perhaps five or six hundred horsepower, with the improvement of the channel to accommodate vessels of deeper draft, they would be forced out of service because of what the Interstate Commerce Commission terms obsolescence. We would not be able to operate them in competition with the higher power boats any more than a little tramway locomotive can be operated in competition with a Pennsylvania Railroad locomotive.

Mr. HUMPHREYS. In addition to what you have said, does not the other fact of the country clamoring to have the Missouri River taken off the map make people somewhat timid about investing money in further equipment?

Mr. MACKIE. I do not think you realize how timid they are. I think you are convinced how bad the river is. Between Kansas City and the mouth of the river, a distance of 390 miles, there are 123 crossings, so called-that is, where the river runs out of one bend into another, eroding the banks in that bend and loading the water down with silt, which is deposited, of course, virtually damming the river up. That is where our troubles are. There are 123 of those in 390 miles. This year, of those 123 crossings, by soundings, by ascertaining the facts ourselves with our own crews on the boats, on their regular trips in the month of November, the low water season-on what we call the low-water season based on the Kansas City gauge-we found that 84 had 6 feet of water or more over them, so that they were not troublesome; another 21, making 105, had from 5 to 6 feet, and they were not troublesome; 12 were very crooked and tortuous and difficult to negotiate with a tow, but had plenty of water, so that they were not so very troublesome; only 6 had 34 feet of water.

Mr. HUMPHREYS. Why was that?

Mr. MACKIE. It happens to be a condition of the Missouri River that there are anywhere from 3 to 7 bad crossings in the fall of the year; I mean by that with only low water over them, but all of the other crossings have plenty of water over them. Those five or six, however, shift; they may be in the upper part of the river this year, in the lower part of the river next year, or some place else. But as the bank is revetted the erosion is stopped and the overloading therefore, of the water, is stopped. I want to say to you that in the Missouri River there is, in the low-water season in the fall of the year, an apparent desire on the part of the river to become clear; there is not so much silt there in the low-water season, due to the fact that 10 per cent of the river has already been revetted. You go below a series of bends where the river has been revetted and you find that there is a great tendency to clarify the water, although some silt comes down from above.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you know whether they are using willow mattresses there?