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There is a class of expenditure which, when it has once been made, the Government has assumed a burden which calls for continued expense for a great many years or for all eternity.

Some of these expenditures are a good deal like an automobile that a man buys and does not really need in his business, and thereupon he finds that he has gasoline bills and all other kind of bills for all time. That kind of expenditure I think ought to be entered upon with very great care and mighty little of it done by the Federal Government. But there is another kind of expenditure and that is when you invest your money in something that pays back every year; if not directly to the Government, directly to the country; and that sort of investment or that sort of an expenditure is an investment, not an expense. I think the line is so clear and is so important, gentlemen of the committee, that I may safely say that when you come to the matter of spending money that is to bring returns, economy frequently results in loss and in very great loss.

Now, with that preliminary observation, I will say that we built the great Panama Canal at an expense of practically $400,000,000. I do not imagine that its tolls will ever pay the interest upon that money. But the return that must come to this country will pay back the value of that canal we all confidently hope and expect many times over. Therefore the money used in the construction of the Panama Canal was not money used in a pork barrel enterprise, but it was money wisely invested which will bring back a great return. In that same class I put the matter of the improvement of the rivers of this country, and I include not only the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, but every other river that can be at a reasonable expense made navigable.

I am now going to state a reason that I think demands, not argues for, but absolutely demands and forces the improvement of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, and I include in that statement at least certain other rivers similarly situated. The Panama Canal has made it possible for a shipper upon the Atlantic coast, for a business institution upon the Atlantic coast, manufacturer, jobber, wholesaler, all classes of shippers, to ship goods through the Panama Canal to the Pacific coast, and from the Pacific coast far into the interior at rates more favorable than we can obtain from the railroads for a direct shipment from the Mississippi or Missouri Valley to that country to the west of us which can now be served through the Panama Canal. It is also true that those advantages are so great that business institutions now located in the Missouri and Mississippi Valleys will be at a rate disadvantage even as to the country which lies immediately contiguous to these great harbors.

I expected to be able to present to you the actual figures upon that matter, but our friends who were to collect them and bring them here have not got them to me this morning in shape to present. But I make the statement broadly, gentlemen of the committee, and say that it can be demonstrated that unless something is done the entire business not the entire business, because I do not desire to make any exaggerated statement-but a great percentage of the business now being done by manufacturers, jobbers, and wholesalers of the Mississippi and Missouri Valleys will be placed at a great disadvantage in competition with the factories of both the eastern and

western coasts, and that an artificial advantage gained by reason of the construction at the expense of the whole Government of the Panama Canal; and I say to this committee that the problem is one of the greatest importance, and it is one which in my humble way I venture to suggest to the committee should receive the profound consideration of the committee. Now, the question is, How is that: to be met? It might possibly be met in legislation regarding railroad rates, but if we can meet a natural advantage by the creation of another natural advantage, or if we can meet a physical advantage caused by nature and by the act of man-that is, by the seas and by the construction of the canal-by the creation of another physical advantage, then, of course, everybody is benefited and nobody has the right to complain.

Now, that brings me to the thought which I want to express, and when I have expressed it I think I shall relieve the committee from further listening to me. Speaker Clark, I think, has very effectively put his finger upon at least one branch of what I am going to discuss when he states there is no use in doing this work by piecemeal. I maintain that a large part of the money that we have used upon our rivers has been wasted simply by virtue of that process. However, before I discuss that I want to lay before the committee what I think is the essential thing for the restoration of commerce upon these rivers, and I want to begin by using Kansas City as an illustration. Kansas City, without any stream upon which to operate, has nevertheless restored transportation to that stream, if I may perpetuate that sort of an Irish bull. We had put up to us the problem, Go out and navigate before there is any proper navigable stream, and if you succeed in navigating the unnavigable, then we will make it navigable for you. Now, there never was a more idiotic proposition put up to a lot of white men. It was the old story of the mother's philosophy when she said to her daughter, and I have quoted this before, "Mother, may I go out to swim," and she said, Yes; but don't go near the water."

How any set of men are to be expected to run a railroad train between two cities before the track is laid, how any set of men are expected to navigate a stream before it is made navigable, and how that is to be the test of their right to afterwards have it made navigable is a thing beyond the comprehension of a man of my limited capacity. Nevertheless, upon this river in its present miserable and unimproved condition the merchants and business men of Kansas City have restored navigation. In the season of 1911 they moved 1,084 tons, referring to page 23 of the document before you; in 1912, 5,215 tons; in 1913, 9,784 tons; in 1914, 13,687 tons; in 1915, 27,306 tons, and that only runs to the month of October, and taking the full season accord ing to the basis of work that has already been done, it will run to over 33,000 tons.

Now let us see the conditions under which this has been done. A river is navigable in so far as it is navigable at its worst point, and not at its best point. One sand bar across a river that is 4,000 miles long can stop the through navigation on the entire stream. A sand bar every 20 or 30 miles will stop any effective navigation on any stream. These are the conditions under which this commerce has been put back; parts of the river improved, parts of the river unimproved,

so that in going from Kansas City to St. Louis these gentlemen must avoid sand bars, must find their way through tortuous and crooked channels, and must be subjected to every kind of danger and every sort of disadvantage. Nevertheless, they have put this commerce back upon that part of the river and brought it almost to a paying point at 20 per cent less than the railroad rates.

Now, to illustrate the next point I want to call to your attention, there was a day when I was a boy when a man who had a horse that could trot a mile in three minutes was regarded as having a horse fit to put on the track, whereas to-day a man who would put a threeminute horse on the track would be laughed off of a county fairground. There was a day when boats could operate upon these streams because there was no other way for people to move their goods. Persons had to wait and get the goods by the boat, and until the boat came they were helpless, and, as that was the only method of transportation, of course it could continue to exist. There was even at that day, however, a condition that I want to advert to very briefly. There were wharves; there were boats running from one end of the river to the other or connecting with other boats; there was through traffic. It went from the Gulf of Mexico to Fort Benton. They had wharves and warehouses built down near the river banks, and there were facilities for doing business. The railroads came along, and we all know the history of that matter. The railroad cut its rate to river points for the deliberate purpose of putting boats out of existence. The railroads acquired these lines of boats in some instances and put them out of business. It was the day when the old piratical methods of putting your opponent out of business were in vogue and perhaps were no worse with the railroads than it was with the other classes of business. But that is the way the boats were put off and the way in which the railroads established their supremacy. The result was what? The boats began to disappear from the rivers, the wharves began to rot, the warehouses began to go into disuse, so that when Kansas City comes back and undertakes to put commerce upon the Missouri River we not only found that there were no pilots who knew the stream, but it was very difficult to find engineers who knew how to run a steamboat.

There had been no modern steamboats made keeping up with the improvements of the times; there was not a warehouse, and there was not a wharf, and there was not a sidetrack, and there was not a single facility or a single shore light. Mr. Borland and I went down to the department and got those shore lights put in about three years ago, if I remember correctly. They simply had to go out upon this old stream with a lot of amateurs and a lot of old boats and try to put back this traffic. Gentlemen, they made some mistakes. It was a question of experimentation, and you could not avoid mistakes. This is not a word of criticism, and I want that understood. The men had to do the best they could. They found out that first they had to have wharves, and the city of Kansas City put in a wharf. They found out that they had to have better wharf facilities in St. Louis, and that is being provided for. Then they found out there were no places to load goods along the stream at the various little cities and towns and landings between Kansas City and St. Louis. The condition to-day is that they have not as yet supplied those facilities. The cost of the wharf at Kansas City was $75,000.

We also found that, in order to keep up with modern times, we ought to have modern machinery, so we put in cranes, hoisting cranes, and facilities for loading and unloading boats. Today, when they take up traffic along that river, they have to run up as near the shore as they can, and they drive cattle on, or load hogs or wheat on the boats with the old farmer method of getting it on in some way. But they are beginning to solve these problems; they are beginning to get some warehouse facilities, and they have succeeded in getting railroad connections with the wharves at Kansas City and St. Louis. Now, it must be manifest to you gentlemen that to operate under those conditions and make a profit is an entirely different question from what it would be if every little town along that river had its wharf and had its warehouse; it is an entirely different proposition from what it would be if spurs from railroads were run down to these wharves in all of the cities of any size, so that the merchants could load their goods into the cars and run them directly to the wharf, and have them again loaded from the boats onto the cars and run directly back to their places of business. These things are developments which must come, and they are being rapidly accomplished; but until they are accomplished this boat line has today a good many expenses, and I suppose it has to expend for labor a dozen times what it would be required to expend for labor if these facilities had been built up.

That brings me to my second observation: In order to have these facilities you must have a large commerce. You can not operate at great expense and you can not have cranes and wharves built at great expense if you are to move only a small amount of goods. If a railroad is only 10 miles long its traffic can not be great; if it is 100 miles long its traffic is much greater, but when you take a railroad 2,000 miles long, then you begin to operate an enterprise that reaches out into many directions and that carries goods from 1,000 points and concentrates them and carries them in such a way that the expense is greatly reduced. Now, I want to say right here that if Kansas City has demonstrated that at 20 per cent less than the railroad rates she has been constantly growing and increasing in this river business, if she has brought it to the point where it is almost paying at that rate, then it must be perfectly clear that when we get these additional facilities and I am speaking now without river improvement, just taking the old river as it is that boat line can be operated at a profit and there will be an increase of traffic. Now, how will you get that increased traffic?

It is perfectly easy to demonstrate that a railroad running from the city of Washington over to the city of Richmond might be a financial failure, but if the same railroad were extended on to New York City and extended on from Richmond to points farther away, it might be a wholly profitable enterprise, and if we can operate on that stretch of river, as we have almost demonstrated, under the present miserable conditions-if we can operate on that stretch of river between Kansas City and St. Louis and produce these results, then it follows, as the day follows the night, that if boats and traffic were restored on the Mississippi River generally, so that our barges could be loaded at Kansas City and carried down to the Gulf, tied-on, as that is the new method of using the river, with light barges that can be

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loaded at points and hauled in a string of barges, that traffic would be highly profitable.

If we could have some improvement on that river and upon the Mississippi River so that there would always be a highway upon which these boats could run except when obstructed by ice, then, with the wharves and levees restored, as they would be, and with sidetracks running from the railroads so that the goods could be loaded at the back door of a man's establishment and carried to the wharf, as they are now carried to the railroads, there could not be any question in my mind about the restoration of this commerce. Now, in that connection, I want to call your attention to this fact, that the Kansas City Navigation Co. takes goods from the back door of a man's place of business and delivers goods to the back door of the merchant's place of business, and they insure his goods for him and do for him everything that the railroad does. They do all of that under these adverse conditions. Now, that brings us to the point of the matter.

The CHAIRMAN. I suppose, of course, you have made some figures with reference to the amount of commerce that will probably be carried up and down the river in case the contemplated improvements are made?

Senator REED. Judge Bland, one of our prominent merchants, and also a lawyer of distinguished ability and a former circuit judge, who had the good sense to go into a business where he could make money, will enlighten the committee on that subject.

Mr. EDWARDS. What is his business?

Senator REED. The drug business. He has a large wholesale drug house that sells drugs all over our part of the country, and he is also in the business of promoting the public welfare.

Now, I want to lay before this committee this thought: I say that the time has arrived when Congress has got to face this question of internal improvements upon a different basis or from a different basis. How natural it is for a wagon to run in a rut, but it is not any more natural for a wagon to run in a rut than it is for the human We started in to improve these rivers upon mind to run in a rut. the theory alone that they carried or would carry commerce, and our old constitutional constructions ran wholly to the view that the Federal Government could not do anything and ought not to do any thing except to improve the post roads and establish post offices, and they had a great deal of trouble in improving a river or anything else except where they limited it to mere matters of commerce. Perhaps that is not an exactly accurate statement, but it at least foreshadows the thought I am trying to impress. Now, whatever there was of that old theory, it has been destroyed everywhere except in the matter of the improvement of rivers, or, if not destroyed, it has been so thoroughly whittled away that there is nothing left of it to amount to very much.

We take the money of the Government and we send men all over the world to get seeds and bring them back here and distribute them among our farmers. We buy prize bulls, studhorses, jackasses, and hogs, and we propogate them for the benefit of agriculture. We expend millions and millions of dollars in fighting farm pests, the boll weevil, and every other pest. There is no use detailing them, because you all know what we are doing. Now, under what clause

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