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BUREAU OF RAILWAV ECONOMICS
WASHINGTON, n. C.
ADDRESS OF MR. L. F. LOREE, PRESIDENT,
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK,
^—AT THE 160th ANNUAL BANQUET OF THE CHAMBER,
WALDORF-ASTORIA, NEW YORK CITY,
NOVEMBER 15, 1928
I have thought it might be of interest if I made some reference
to the character of the work for which the Chamber of Commerce
of the State of New York holds itself responsible. I have selected
two subjects upon which its committees on National Defence, on
Aviation, and on Internal Trade and Improvements have as yet
expressed no opinion, and with which I shall deal as an indivi¬
dual and in no way officially.
There are in the world millions of men—almost two thousand
millions of them. Let us consider for a moment the environment
in which they live and the effect of that environment upon their
destinies.
There is a considerable population living in the regions of low
temperatures—Eskimos and others. Conditions there reduce the
activities of these people to the mere effort to support life to the
exclusion of everything else. There is a considerable population
living in the desert lands, mostly in high temperatures, such as
the Hottentots and the Buriats. Here, also, the environment re¬
duces them to a matter of maintenance. In the equatorial circle,
with its intense heat, great humidity, much fungi, many insects
and birds, and luxuriant plant growth, there are two or three hun¬
dred millions of people whose chief instrument of production is
the hoe, calling for work far harder than that of the farmer of
cooler regions. These peoples—all of them—have practically no
margin beyond mere maintenance.
When we get away from these three extreme conditions, we
come into a population of some seven hundred millions who are
rice producers and rice eaters, cultivating little patches of ground,
often as small as two acres to the family, living on a vegetable
diet, produced almost exclusively by hand labor, who have but a
small advantage, though a very definite one, over those in the
worse condition.
The fact seems to be, and it is a very melancholy one, that, if
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relatively small areas be disregarded, the continents of Europe
and North America, compared with the rest of the surface of the
earth, hold by far the greatest promise for the human race. These
lands are occupied, generally speaking, to the exclusion of all
others by the white peoples.
1 have often wondered why, out of the vast mass of these so un¬
fortunately situated, the Socialists, from their seething passion—
for they have never been able to formulate a philosophy—did not
make a selection for the purpose of uplift, instead of concentrating
their frantic efforts on pulling down the best society that mankind
has so far been able to evolve. Are we left to infer that the So¬
cialists are actuated not so much by altruism as by envy and
malice? (Applause)
Of all these people, fortunate and unfortunate, the outstanding
characteristic is that, as human beings, they are so full of human
nature—that they are so given over to pride, covetousness, lust,
anger, gluttony, envy, sloth, murder, oppression of the poor, de¬
frauding laborers of their wages, jealousy, suspicion and super¬
stition. These blind deities govern, to an incredible degree, Chris¬
tians, Jews, Turks, Infidels and Heathens alike. So much so that
the morals of the world seem sometimes waif as a stray cat.
There are, of course, countervailing virtues. To insure the con¬
trol of man in the interest of the virtues, we resort to systems of
government by rewards and punishments. Rewards few and
meager; punishments many and heavy. This instrument of con¬
trol, when seen at its best, reflects a settled order based upon the
institution of the family, the institution of private property and
the authority of a government founded upon justice and morals.
Such a government we have enjoyed as a heritage from our
fathers for more than a century and a half. But the Government
rests always upon the element of force; we hold our lives, our
properties, and our religion itself through the policeman, the jail
and the gallows.
With universal recognition of the necessity of an ultimate ap¬
peal to force to preserve peace and order within the nation's
boundaries, it seems odd that any should raise a question as to the
necessity for a similar force to protect the nation against its
neighbors. Is it not strange that there should be failure or de¬
liberate unwillingness to recognize that those things that are
handled by the policeman and the courts locally are, in essence,
exactly the things that are handled by the army and navy as
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against the foreigners? Perhaps no nation stands so much in need
of a recognition of this necessity for armed protection as does the
United States, and perhaps no nation has, since the warnings of
Washington, turned so resolutely away from its serious considera¬
tion. Let us remember the counsel of the Yellow Knife Indian—
"It will be time enough for the warrior to throw away his gun
when the squaw casts away her papoose."
Contrast our experience with a country less fortunately situated.
As Faure has pointed out, the geographical situation of France
makes her the crossroads of the peoples of the West. Since the
beginnings of history the hordes from the great steppes which
reach from the Vistula to the Amur unceasingly threatened her
or actually crossed the Rhine to burn her towns and mow down
her harvests to the rhythm of their hymns of war. Her western
coasts lie on the route of the Northmen in their descent to the
southern seas and overlook, like an offered prey, from the high
cliffs of Brittany, where the pirates who bear in their hearts the
poetry of the waves and the stars, are watching for the passage of
fishing boats and ships of war. From the corridors of the Pyre¬
nees from time immemorial there have poured out on to her plains
Numidians, Carthaginians, Iberians, Arabs, in search of oases and
flocks to seize and minarets to erect above the waters and the
palms. Her southern coasts constantly saw appearing from the
direction of the rising sun the blue, green, red and orange sails
beneath which Phoenician sailors watched the young girls grouped
around the bathing places, meaning to capture them with violence
or to exchange for them dazzling carpets, glassware or little
images. And in more modern years, time after time her fields
have been overrun by foreign foes.
Contrast, I say, her experience with that of our own city whose
streets have not echoed the tramp of hostile foot since the evacua¬
tion in 1783.
What then is really our situation? If the recent war has taught
us anything it should be that, while large bodies of troops may
be raised and even trained in a short time, the art of command
and staff work in the field requires years of preparation. For us
this lesson cries out for security against surprise and an area for
practice maneuvers in the field of probable operations. Perhaps
the greatest line of military weakness of the United States runs
from the Chesapeake Bay to Lake Erie. Failure to hold that line
would so divorce the manufacturing plants from the sources of
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raw material, would so separate those living in the Atlantic States
from their food supplies as to virtually paralyze the nation.
After the war of 1871, France undertook to protect its Eastern
frontier by the erection of a system of fortifications, of which
Verdun was the hinge, and which came to be known as the Grand
Crown of Nancy. This barrier was so strong as to force the last
invasion of France to be effected through Belgium, nor was the
barrier overrun by all the efforts directed against it. Is it not of
vital importance that we undertake a similar development of mil¬
itary defense of our line of military weakness? Such fortifica¬
tions would, of course, be purely a defensive measure, but would
be effective as nothing else could be in serving notice upon all that
these United States are not an inviting object of buccaneering in¬
vasion.
The first line for the defense of the nation is, of course, the
navy. For the defense of the Gulf of Mexico and the eastern
end of the Panama Canal, a naval base has been established at
Guantanamo, Cuba. For the defense of the North Atlantic coast,
the naval bases are Norfolk, Virginia, Newport, Rhode Island,
and New York. The facilities at Norfolk and Newport are, let
us hope, adequate; certainly they permit of satisfactory expan¬
sion. The facilities at New York are quite inadequate and need
resolute attention.
Supplementing the ocean as the natural home of the navy, there
should be inland waterway communication between Norfolk and
Boston. The Federal Government now owns the Cape Cod Canal,
about eight miles long, with a navigable depth of 25 feet, the
Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, about 14 miles long, with a navi¬
gable depth of 12 feet, while surveys have been made for a canal
across New Jersey connecting the waters of the Delaware and
Raritan Rivers, 31 miles long and 12 feet deep, with masonry built
for further deepening to 27 feet. It has, therefore, been found
practicable, at a reasonable outlay, to provide the inland waterway
so essential to our primary defense. Work should he constantly
pressed to this end and no year should pass without substantial
progress being made. Let us never forget the old proverb, "Sweat
saves blood."
I would not be understood as belittling the efforts of diplomacy
in the avoidance of the causes of war—notably, the anti-war
treaties, which are so great a triumph of the present Federal ad¬
ministration. (Applause) Always we may count upon a saving
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remnant with strong and delicate imagination, moral sensitiveness
and spirituality who in times of moral crisis, by their surer in-'
stinct, save us if we are to be saved. Let us give them our whole¬
hearted support, but let us be wise in our day and generation and
not put our trust in them alone.
Having for ourselves, so far as our outlook permits, insured
domestic tranquility and provided for common defense, which are
among the reasons given in the preamble of the Federal Constitu¬
tion for its establishment, what may we do to secure for ourselves
the necessities of a comfortable existence?
The great underlying purpose of civilization is to overcome na¬
ture. Quite as definitely as elsewhere in the world, our popula¬
tion is circumstanced by its physical geography. For us here on
the Atlantic seaboard, the outstanding feature is the range of the
Appalachian Mountains, separating us from the Mississippi Val¬
ley and in which, from the shores of Lake Ontario to the Gulf of
Mexico, there is no water gap. Crossing it we must mount into
the clouds. Usually an elevation in excess of 2,000 feet must be
overcome. -
Of the freight moving across this high mountain range, four
tons come East to every ton that goes West. Every American is
familiar with the anxiety of England as to her geographical situa¬
tion and the recognition that is in the forefront of all her thought
of the necessity of maintaining her overseas communications in
order that she may have food for her people and raw material for
her workers. But England is no more dependent upon the coun¬
tries overseas than is the Atlantic seaboard on the region beyond
the Alleghenies. Yet we seem oblivious to the hazards threaten¬
ing our prosperity and growth.
Kipling has remarked that perhaps no great nation ever perished
save through a failure to handle its transportation. What, then,
are the transportation recources of which we have not yet availed?
In overcoming this barrier of nature (the Alleghany Moun¬
tains), two notable additions to our present facilities are possible.
We should never cease the effort to bring them both into our serv¬
ice. First, the canal joining the Hudson River and the Great
Lakes, which Governor Clinton projected as long ago as 1810,
which was opened for operation in 1825, and which has since
been improved to a depth of twelve feet. In considering canaliza¬
tion, the matter should be freed from international considerations;
from a by-product use in the generation and distribution of elec-
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trie current, and other extraneous suggestions. While hydro¬
electric machinery has been brought almost to perfection, trans¬
mission losses seriously circumscribe the area to be supplied with
current and already this field, so far as it may be reached from
the St. Lawrence River, is over-supplied.
The primary question is, the canal being completed, what use
can be made of it? Because of greater draft, fewer hatches, the
longer time to load and unload, the larger crew, and the difficul¬
ties of navigation, ocean-going craft cannot be expected to go to
the Great Lakes. What must happen is that Lake ships, now
standardized to a draft of 21 feet, will come down to tidewater.
The outstanding physical features of the several routes now re¬
garded as possible are as follows:
Route
Length
(miles)
Rise
and
fail
No.
Locks
Length
long
levels
(miles)
St. Lawrence
373.35
565.6
22
321
Via Oswego
365.89
816.6
28
229
Improved Barge Canal . .
339.00
565.6
18
187
The studies so far made seem to have been confined to the first
two indicated routes. I have wondered why serious consideration
has not been given to the further improvement of the Barge
Canal. By lowering the level of Oneida Lake three feet, raising
the level between locks 23 and 24 four feet, and lowering the level
between locks 24 and 25 five or six feet, there would be elimi¬
nated three locks and a continuous level stretch of 63 miles would
be obtained. By not too heroic work the height of land east of
Oneida Lake could be cut through and the new Oneida Lake
level brought east to Little Falls, eliminating five locks and fur¬
ther increasing the length of this level stretch to 124 miles. The
advantages of an improved Barge Canal route are such that no
study of the problem can ignore them. I can make no attempt
here to cover the great problem in all its aspects, but I may fur¬
ther suggest that consideration must be given to the conditions
that will prevail when tidewater is reached.
Coming then into the ports of the Hudson and East Rivers the
commerce of the Great Lakes will meet the commerce of the
world. From this port there are regular sailings made by 522
steamship lines, reaching 24 cities of the United States and 77
foreign countries; reaching, in other words, the entire world. And
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this traffic rapidly increases—since the beginning of the century,
in shipping tonnage, 2.6 times; in export and import tonnage, 3.5
times—while, with the intercoastal canal, inland navigation will be
provided to Boston on the North and to Beaufort, N. C., on the
South.
Second: Quite as notable as the possibilities of the develop¬
ment of deep waterways is that of a specialized railway. There
was introduced in Congress on April 21, 1874, a bill looking to
a new trans-Alleghany railroad. It was considered by the Com¬
mittee on Railways and Canals, Mr. Hurlbut, Chairman, which
reported favorably a bill, House of Representatives H. R. 1194,
to charter a double track freight railway company from tidewater
on the Atlantic to Council Bluffs on the Missouri River. The
road was located across the Alleghenies at an elevation more than
four hundred feet lower than that usually obtained and the dis¬
tance to Pittsburgh was shortened by eighty and to Chicago by
one hundred miles, while the line was laid to a very low grade,
now determined as fifteen feet to the mile. Since this report
railroad construction has restricted the area to be considered to
that between the Delaware and Allegheny Rivers. Such a high¬
way is of vital importance to the Atlantic seaboard and the wis¬
dom of Congress in pronouncing in its favor should go far to
safeguard its construction and insure that it is a resource held in
reserve to be used the moment it becomes a necessity.
In discussing the project the Committee reported to Congress
that: ''The questions naturally arising from the consideration of
this bill and others of like character are so large in their possi¬
bilities, so vast in results, and so deeply affecting the growth and
profitable development of important portions of the country, that
they deserve deliberate and candid consideration, not only by the
representatives of the people, but by the people themselves. * * *
The existing trunk roads leading from the Atlantic to the West
were not constructed for economy in operation as freight roads.
They were built in the first instance as local roads, with reference
to local interests, and not at all as their managers would now
locate and build them, to secure and supply adequate means for
freight traffic. * * *
"The remedy, it appears to your Committee, for existing evils
most easy and expeditious in its results of any proposed, and
reaching with its direct benefits to the whole region between the
Ohio River and the Lakes, as well as the entire West, now sub-
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skliary to St. Louis and Chicago, is the building- of a double-track
railroad whose main line shall have its eastern terminus on the
waters of New York harbor. * * * All considerations seem
to point with inevitable certainty to the selection of New York
harbor as the eastern terminus of any great freight road, while at
the same time communications from the main line of the road pro¬
posed can readily and economically be made with New England,
Philadelphia, and Baltimore. * * *
"After all is done that can in reason be expected to be done by
the United States in improving- and supplementing our wonderful
system of inland water-communication, there remains the unde¬
niable fact that a very large part of the most productive land
destined to be filled up with a vast population is now, and always
will be, dependent for its routes to the ocean upon railways alone.
* * * qqie channels of trade make themselves. * * ■* Your
Committee believes we must in the future depend, as we un¬
doubtedly do at the present, very largely upon the railway as a
chief means of internal commerce. * * *
"The remedy, then, is to build a railroad upon a new system,
to build it for freight, to shorten the distances, to reduce and
equalize the grades, to expend capital wisely and courageously in
judicious location and bold construction, so as to save in opera¬
tion, and thus, by increasing the capacity of the motive power, to
reduce rates, and depend for profits upon largely increased busi¬
ness.
"The difficulty has always been in crossing the Alleghenies.
* * * Is there no practical line, shorter, better, and capable of
supplying the needs of the hour? Your Committee, from the in¬
formation before it, believes that there is. * * * Your Com¬
mittee is satisfied that this railroad, if built upon the terms and
conditions specified to be observed by it in the bill on which its re¬
port is founded, will go far toward solving the question of cheap
transportation for the vast area of the country over which its in¬
fluence will be felt, and will, in a large degree, regulate other rail¬
roads now existing, or which may be created within the same
area."
Vital as is the dependence upon relief from our hazardous posi¬
tion, may we not look forward to the future with composure, see¬
ing that two so effective avenues of relief remain available? (Ap¬
plause)