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MEMORIAL AND PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
RIVER AND HARBOR
IMPROVEMENT CONVENTION
ASSEMBLED AT
TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA,
NOVEMBER 17TH. 1885.

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MEMORIAL AND PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
RIVER AND HARBOR
Improvement Convention:
ASSEMBLED AT
TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA,
November 17th, 1885,
INCLUDING VALUABLE, INTERESTING AND RELIABLE STATISTICAL FACTS
AND OTHER INFORMATION
CONCERNING THE
Coal, Iron and Agricultural Resources
OF
ALABAMA, EAST MISSISSIPPI AND WEST GEORGIA,
CONTIGUOUS TO OR DRAINED BY THE RIVER SYSTEM OF ALABAMA;
WITH
AN ACCURATE MAP OF THE TERRITORY
PENETRATED BY THE WATER-WAYS OF ALABAMA FLOWING
INTO THE GULF OF MEXICO AT MOBILE.
CINCINNATI:
THE OHIO VALLEY PRESS,
No. 143 RACE STREET.
1886.
Transportation
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INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
This publication contains a Memorial to the Congress of the
United States and the deliberations of a Convention of more
than two hundred representative business men of Alabama and
adjoining States, met together to consider the important sub-
ject of River and Harbor Improvement, looking to the speedy
development of our rich coal and iron fields, which lie so close
to the Gulf, and accessible by water-ways so susceptible of im-
provement, and to bring into market the fertile lands watered
by these streams, so fitly located to carry their bountiful prod-
ucts to the trade of the seas.
The accompanying map has been prepared with care and accu-
racy by Colonel HORACE HARDING, Engineer, with the assistance
of Dr. EUGENE A. SMITH, State Geologist of Alabama, with a
special view to showing the water-ways and harbor of Alabama,
and their intimate connection with the great coal and iron wealth
of this section. And the undersigned Committee respectfully ask
the thoughtful attention of the reader, not only to the map, but
also to the Memorial and the several communications in these
pages from prominent men of scholarship and scientific knowl-
edge, giving reliable and accurate information upon the subjects
treated, and information valuable to business men, and valuable
to the representatives in the Nation's councils from every local-
ity. Indeed, this section of the country is destined at an early
day to play a conspicuous part in shaping and controlling the
commerce of this portion of the world, and in furnishing cheap
coal and iron to the sea-going service of the United States
Government.
H. H. BROWN, Chairman,
S. A. M. WOOD,
W. C. JEMISON,
Committee on Publication.
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CONTENTS.
PAGE
Address of Hon. W. C. Jemison.
Address of Hon. James L. Pugh.
Address of Col. E. L. Corthell...
5
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17
•
•
•
Committee on Improvement in the Harbor of Mobile and Rivers of Ala-
bama....
46
•
•
•
Committee on Permanent Organization and Work of the Convention.. 11
Committee on Printing..
·Committee on Tehuantepec Ship Railway
•
Delegates Enrolled as Members of the Convention.
Executive Committee..
Letter from Senator John T. Morgan
Letter from Hon. H. A. Herbert
Letter from Congressman Joseph Wheeler.
•
• •
•
Letter from Congressman Wm. C. Oates.
Letter from Colonel John T. Milner..
Letter from Colonel James B. Eads.
Memorial to Congress of the United States.
Motion of Mayor W. C. Jemison...
Motion of Dr. Peter Bryce, of Tuscaloosa.
Motion of Colonel T. G. Bush, of Mobile..
Motion of Mr. Skaggs, of Talladega.
Motion of Mr. Watts, of Montgomery.
Observations Upon the Improvement of the Harbor of Mobile in the Past,
Present and Future.
Proceedings-First Day, Morning Session.
Proceedings-First Day, Evening Session.
Proceedings-Second Day, Morning Session..
Proceedings-Second Day, Evening Session..
•
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•
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Report of Committee on Permanent Organization and Work of the Con-
vention...
Report of Committee on Mineral Resources of Alabama..
Report of Committee on the Improvement of Mobile Harbor..
Report of Committee on Water-Ways..
• •
Report of Committee on Agricultural Resources.
Report of Committee on Finance...
Report of Local Committee on Correspondence..
Resolution of Mr. Lyon, of Mobile.
•
Resolution of Mr. Wolfe, of Pensacola..
Resolution of Mr. Moses, of Sheffield.
•
Resolution of Mr. Stansel, of Carrollton.
Resolution of Mr. Rutledge, of Montgomery.
Resolution of Mr. Wiley, of Montgomery.
Resolution of General S. A. M. Wood..
Speech of Hon. A. O. Lane.....
• •
Telegram from Congressman John M. Allen.
•
•
•
•
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}
MEMORIAL
OF THE
River and Harbor Improvement Convention
ASSEMBLED IN TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA,
November 17 and 18, 1885,
TO THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ASKING THE APPRO-
PRIATION OF A SUFFICIENT SUM OF MONEY TO COMPLETE THE DEEPENING
OF MOBILE HARBOR, AND THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE NAVIGATION OF THE
WATER-WAYS OF ALABAMA, WITH THEIR TRIBUTARIES IN ADJOINING STATES.
To the Honorable Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States in Congress assembled:
Your Memorialists, who assembled in Convention, at Tusca-
loosa, Alabama, on the 17th and 18th days of November, 1885,
from the States of Alabama, Mississippi and Florida, respectfully
and earnestly recommend, and ask the appropriation of a sum of
money sufficient to complete, at an early day, the deepening of
the Harbor of Mobile at least to twenty-three feet, and the im-
provement of the water-ways of Alabama and their tributaries.
It is a matter well known that through the Harbor of Mobile
the agricultural productions of many States are sent to markets
abroad, and the convergence of many railroads to the Port of
Mobile gives it an importance with regard to direct trade with all
the neighboring nations of the Gulf of Mexico and the South
Atlantic.
This is a matter in common with many other ports on the Gulf
of Mexico. In addition to this, and rapidly becoming far more
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important to the great interests of the whole United States, is the
development that at this point, where almost all of the water-
ways in the State of Alabama pour their floods into the Gulf, is
found the nearest and cheapest port to which the immense min-
eral treasures of the State can be transported.
The rivers which finally fall into Mobile Bay spread out over
the State like a fan, touching north-western Georgia on the east,
and entering the eastern side of Mississippi. All of these rivers.
traverse immense coal fields, the FULL EXTENT and RICHNESS of
which has not yet been fully determined, although enough is
known now to justify the assertion that they are unsurpassed in
the known earth.
Besides the coal deposits beds of iron ore, surrounded by every
facility to be worked and used by man, are found contiguous to
the coal and near all of said rivers.
These coal and iron deposits are rapidly attracting the atten-
tion of capitalists in this country and in Europe, and their devel-
opment in the last ten years has been such as to create surprise
in the minds of men habituated to the study of the mineral
resources of the world.
For many years the coal used by vessels in navigating the
waters which wash the shores of the West Indies, Mexico and all
the South American States on the eastern side of that continent,
has been brought from Europe, except a small fraction furnished
at very high rates from Chili.
With water transportation, which the improvements of the
rivers in Alabama will give, this entire traffic can all be turned to
the Port of Mobile, and coal of a superior quality, and at vastly
cheaper rates, furnished to those who need it.
To accomplish this the sum of money needed and asked for is
comparatively insignificant when we consider the immense ben-
efits to be obtained therefrom in actual wealth to the whole
country.
This Convention, in this Memorial, need do no more than men-
tion these things. No argument is necessary to press upon your
minds the facts of the lasting advantages to result to the United
States from the accomplishment of the object as stated.
That it may be easily attained the reports of competent en-
gineers of the Government have fully demonstrated.
Nor have we, in this Memorial, thought it best to detain you
with reiterating the excellent results to be reached by the com-
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pletion of the great Governmental works on the Tennessee River.
So many States are directly and positively interested in the early
completion of the canal around the Muscle Shoals, and the re-
moval of every obstruction to navigation in that noble river, that
the recommendations of the River and Harbor Convention on that
subject must have many able advocates.
The commercial relation of Alabama, Georgia, North and South
Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky, with all the North-western
States, are directly involved in this work; and the recommend-
ations of the departments at Washington indicate that there will
be no delay in its completion.
The Convention, which assembled at Tuscaloosa and which ad-
dresses you in this Memorial, have directed the publication of the
proceedings of that body, so that the results of their labors may
be laid before Congress and the country.
The many able papers submitted to the Convention from its
Committees, and which are contained in its printed proceedings,
demonstrate, fully, these propositions:
First. The existence of large and inexhaustible deposits of coal
and iron and other minerals in the State of Alabama, near and
along the line of the water-ways which flow into Mobile Bay.
Second. Also, that along these rivers, outside of the means of
transportation by railroads, there is produced large amounts of
cotton and grain, which should be the subject of export from said
Port of Mobile.
Third. That the whole country traversed by said rivers is
covered with forests, almost in their virgin state, of the finest
timber, suitable for commercial purposes and for ship-building.
Fourth. That all of these things apply strongly to the Ten-
nessee River, with the addition that it flows through several States
besides Alabama.
Fifth. That the channel leading to the Port of Mobile can be
made, with a moderate expenditure of money, of sufficient depth
to admit vessels capable of carrying all the immense freight which
the country will produce and the rivers bring to it.
Sixth. That the improvement of the rivers of Alabama will
have the effect to put at the Port of Mobile the best and cheapest
coal in the world, sufficient in quantity to supply all the neighbor-
ing Nations, and all the vessels that sail from any of those ports,
as well as those of the United States, so as to greatly enrich the
whole country.
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———
Seventh. That the water-ways of Alabama will not only be of
immense benefit to the commerce of this country and of the world
in time of peace, but will also be of incalculable advantage to
the United States in time of war.
Your Memorialists, therefore, with earnestness, request your
early attention to the accomplishment of these great works which
much redound, so certainly, in the increased prosperity of millions.
of your fellow-citizens, and inviting your careful and just con-
sideration of all the matters contained in the Proceedings of the
Convention, submit, most respectfully, the subject to your final
determination.
Respectfully,
S. A. M. WOOD, Chairman,
DAVID CLOPTON,
A. O. LANE,
W. H. DENSON,
THOS. A. HAMILTON,
J. T. HARRISON,
N. H. R. DAWSON,
REUBEN CHAPMAN,
R. O. PICKETT.
FIRST DAY.
MORNING SESSION.
THE RIVER AND HARBOR IMPROVEMENT CONVENTION assembled
in Tuscaloosa, Ala., November 17, 1885.
Hon. W. C. JEMISON, Mayor of Tuscaloosa, called the Conven-
tion to order in the following words:
GENTLEMEN-It becomes my duty and my pleasure to welcome
you to the freedom and hospitality of the City of Tuscaloosa,
which you have honored by selecting it as your meeting place.
This is a peculiar pleasure to me, not alone because the whole
State of Alabama is so intimately interested and connected with
this Convention and its objects, but I trust you will pardon me
for saying that I feel a pride in the fact that Tuscaloosa, my
native city, stands at the base of, perhaps, the greatest coal and
iron fields the world has ever produced, and at the head of navi-
gation, on the Warrior River, connecting them with the Gulf,
and standing as the gateway through which the rich treasures of
the Warrior coal basin must pass to the commerce of the seas. I
am satisfied beyond doubt that, the objects of this Convention
being accomplished, nothing short of an earthquake can prevent
Tuscaloosa's being one of the largest manufacturing cities of the
South.
The committee of which I have the honor of being Chairman,
in order to expedite matters, have taken the liberty of selecting
several speakers to address the Convention, as follows: The Hon.
H. Austill, on the subject, "The Importance of Deepening the
Mobile Harbor;" General J. W. Burke, on "The Deposits of the
Coosa and Warrior Coal Fields;" and Hon. E. L. Corthell, Chief
Engineer of Captain James B. Eads, on the subject of "The
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​Tehuantepec Ship Railway "-a magnificent enterprise which is
destined to be of immense benefit to this section. These addresses
will be delivered at such times as will suit the pleasure of the
Convention.
I have also taken the liberty of selecting as temporary Chair-
man, and to make the opening address to the Convention, a man
whose name is inseparably connected with one of the most pro-
gressive cities of modern times.
I now have the pleasure of introducing the Hon. A. O. Lane,
Mayor of Birmingham.
The Hon. A. O. LANE, before taking the Chair, addressed the
Convention as follows:
SPEECH OF HON. A. O. LANE ON TAKING THE CHAIR
TEMPORARILY.
GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION-I am deeply sensible of the
distinguished honor you do me in calling me to preside as tem-
porary Chairman of this Convention. I expect such grand results
to flow from your deliberations as that I shall always be able to
point to my connection with this body with feelings of peculiar
pride and satisfaction. I have no kind of doubt that your labors
here will make a permanent impress upon the future welfare and
destiny of this country. Alabama is a great State. Nature has
given her all the elements of physical greatness. She is blessed
with rich soil, with a fine climate, with lovely valleys, with noble
mountains, with a splendid system of water-courses, with an
excellent harbor, with magnificent timber, and with matchless
mineral deposits of almost every kind. Superadded to all these,
her sons and daughters are possessed of skill and energy worthy to
utilize these princely gifts of nature. Then why is it she does not
take front rank in the grand galaxy of States? The answer to
this question lies in the absence of cheap transportation. That is
the great problem to be solved for Alabama before she can take her
proper rank among her less favored sister States. It is her great-
est want to-day. The lack of it is paralyzing her industries,
retarding her prosperity and checking her growth. The evil
exists beyond cavil or dispute. Let us find a remedy. That is
the province of this Convention.
We can not expect our railroads to cure the malady. True,
they are potent factors in giving life, and strength, and vigor to
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our Commonwealth, and adding to her commercial prosperity. I
have naught to say against them. I would build them up, not
tear them down-foster them, not destroy them. But for them
Birmingham would have been impossible; Jefferson County
would not have about doubled her population in a single decade-
from 1870 to 1880; and the peerless resources of Alabama would
not now be the marvel and wonder of the present age. They must
be run, and run for profit. I would not rob them of a justly earned
dividend on a true valuation of road-beds, rolling stock and other
property and investments. They should not want big dividends.
on watered stock. But the fact is, they are sometimes guilty of
extortion and overcharges and discriminations. These are evils.
that should be checked and curbed. But it should rarely be done
by legislation. It is far better to rely on healthy and far-reaching
competition. They may mock and laugh at railroad commissions,
but when the edict of cheaper rates goes forth from competing
lines, that edict must and will be obeyed. Water transportation
will solve the problem. Railroad companies recognize this, and
they sometimes seek to stifle competition on the water-ways by
buying up canals and closing them against commerce, as they have
done in Pennsylvania and Virginia and other States. They know
it will cheapen freights, and believe it will decrease their dividends.
It will cheapen freights, but I do not believe it will, in the long
run, cause the railroads to be the losers. In this day of vim, and
life, and push, most freights and passage demand a rapid transit.
And, while water transportation would largely monopolize the
heavy freights, the country would be so built up and enriched
that the railroads would gain more in traffic and travel and the
increased lighter freights than they would suffer by the loss of
the heavier cargoes.
And why do I say cheap transportation is the pressing need of
the hour? Is it not a fact that the output of coal in Alabama
increased from 11,000 tons in 1869 to 1,500,000 tons in 1884?
That seems to be a gratifying showing. Well, in answer to that,
I will say that, with cheap water transportation, the coal output
in Alabama may as well be 50,000,000 tons in 1900. We must
not forget that the productive coal area in Alabama is nearly half
as great as that of the whole of Great Britain. The coal meas-
ures of Alabama are 2,600 feet in thickness-nearly 500 feet
greater than those of any other State in the American Union. It
is easily mined by means of drifts and slopes, the mines often
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draining themselves, and the coal, in rich, thick seams, cropping
out on the very banks of the rivers. It ships well, and is admi-
rably adapted to steam, coke, gas and domestic uses. And yet, in
the face of all these facts, Alabama does not ship a single pound
of coal into Mexico and the Central and South American States.
She is forced to stand idly by and see this magnificent trade,
worth millions of dollars, and which nature ordained to be hers,
gobbled up by British bottoms from coal fields five times as far
away as Alabama's products. Coal is put on board ship in Eng-
land at $2 50 per ton, while here in Alabama it is put on board
cars at, say $1 25 per ton; and then it costs $2 more per ton to
ship it to Mobile, and then, perhaps, it has to be lightered down
the bay to deep water. Now, suppose we could transport our
coal on barges to the Gulf at a cost of twenty-five cents per ton,
Alabama would soon hold this munificent trade, to which she is
so justly entitled by natural advantage and geographical position.
Thus, not only would Alabama be enriched, but it would be a
tardy but glorious triumph for the American merchant marine.
And how is this cheap transportation to be secured? Our
rivers must be opened up to navigation. Millions are spent
every year in providing cheap transportation from the East to
the West. This is reversing nature, and nature is wiser than
man. Natural and manufactured products are generally the
same on parallels of latitude, and hence there is no very great
demand for interchange of products on those parallels, while the
natural currents of trade are from North to South for the inter-
change and barter of all those products, natural and artificial,
indigenous, so to speak, to semi-arctic and semi-tropical spheres.
Now, nature sends our rivers coursing from North to South, and
they must have an outlet to the sea. It is of paramount impor-
tance to us to have accessible Southern markets, because the
North is already supplied with almost everything we manu-
facture.
The Mobile Bay receives our noble rivers. Her channel must
be deepened so as to float the largest freight steamships of heavy
tonnage and great draught. Then her principal feeders-the
Warrior, the Coosa and the Cahawba-must be opened up to navi-
gation into the very heart of the coal belts of Alabama. Mobile
should be the focal center, sending out life-blood into all the
great arteries of our Commonwealth, and receiving back fresh
vitality from every commercial pulsation. By means of jetties
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at some points, and locks and dams at others, all the principal
rivers of Alabama leading to Mobile Bay can be made navigable,
year in and year out. What a consummation that would be!
Then, indeed, would Mobile again become the pride of the Gulf
States. We would see her docks crowded with ships from every
clime, laden with cotton and fruits and timber and coal and iron.
Her pristine grandeur and glory would return with renewed and
increased splendor. She would soon whiten the seas with ships
of her own build. The reduced cost of coal and iron would enable
her to drive out the British products from Mexico and the Cen-
tral and South American States. She would soon have a National
arsenal and heavy ordnance manufactory, impossible for inland
cities, because cars can not haul the immense guns, and railroad
bridges can not support them. These industries would fill the
city with skilled artisans. Foreign and domestic trade would
flow in upon her, and she would soon become one of the livest
marts, as she is now one of the fairest cities that ever rested on
bay or gulf or sea.
And now as to the means of reaching these grand results. The
General Government must come to the rescue. However firmly
we may believe in State rights, in a political sense, we must come
to regard this country as a Nation, in a commercial sense. It is
just as impossible for the United States to fail to suffer when one
of the individual States is languishing as it is impossible for the
human body to fail to suffer when one of its limbs is paralyzed.
And if there is one thing on this green earth with which I have
no patience, it is to have a long homily on the Constitution
when my State is crying aloud for the energizing force of Govern-
ment aid to stimulate her waning industries. But for such monu-
mental folly our State would now be threaded with railroads and
traced with navigable streams from Georgia to Mississippi and
from Tennessee to the Gulf. I can almost hear the croakers say-
ing now we can't do anything; it is needless to try. Away with
such frippery and nonsense. I have no toleration for them. I
have never yet known a team to pull a load up hill by lying
down in the shade at the bottom. Ask and ye shall receive; ask
not, and you may be very sure you will receive not.
If I were
deputed by his Satanic Majesty, and forced to send a curse upon
this State, and given power to choose my own instruments of
waste and desolation, I would never select locusts, that some-
times sweep over Europe, darkening the heavens, or grasshoppers
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that march through the West, leaving desolation in their track,
or floods that now and then make portions of Louisiana a vast
waste of waters, or cyclones that bring terror to the stoutest
hearts, or cholera that sweeps away its thousands, but leaves the
living in health and vigor. No; I would choose rather a horde
of croakers, whose croakings, and croakings, and croakings are
more dismal than the croaking of frogs in marshy ponds; and
then, without awaiting results, I would repeat the work, thorough
and complete, in killing the hopes, and sapping the energies, and
benumbing the industries of the people.
I have seen, in early spring, splendid flower yards just begin-
ning to be radiant with beauty and redolent of fragrance; I have
seen tulips and roses, lilies and verbenas, hyacinths and daisies,
japonicas and violets, carnations and heliotropes, as they smiled
upon the morning and kissed the evening dews, give promise of
blessing happy households throughout a long and glorious:
summer; and then I have seen wanton boys trample and tear
down, and pull up, and waste and destroy, until their mothers
would be forced, from sheer self-defense, to send them to the back
yard and keep them there. And so it is with these thoughtless
croakers, as they go about in the great garden of our Common-
wealth, plucking buds of hope and destroying blooms of promise.
from the future of our State. The only chance to escape their
baneful influence is to send them to the back ground, while the
workers, with hope and zeal, and cheer and energy, build up the
waste places, and, sowing broadcast the germs of prosperity, till
them to ripeness and maturity.
This Convention has a great and delicate commission before it.
We must see to it that we have an outlet to the Gulf, aptly termed
the Mediterranean of the New World, so that her Gulf Stream can
receive our vessels upon her friendly bosom and drift them away
to foreign markets faster than a railway train. We must uproot
and tear away the obstructions in our rivers, that stand like a
Chinese wall around our State. We are a part of a great Nation,
and nothing must be allowed to clog the wheels of National pro-
gress. Mobile harbor is a rich patrimony bequeathed by a boun-
teous Providence, in which every citizen of America has a common
heritage.
Let us so direct our efforts as not to fritter away our strength or
waste our energies. Let us strive to get appropriations for our
harbor and those streams that will prove her greatest feeders in
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freights and commerce, not forgetting a canal to link together the
Coosa and the Tennessee, which will give one of the finest
valleys on the globe a chance to pay willing and loving tribute to
our only sea-port. The General Government would save almost
enough every year in reduced cost of coal and iron to pay the
interest on the needed appropriations. And when those rivers.
are opened up you will see towns and cities lining their banks,
manufactories springing into life and activity, infusing fresh
strength and renewed vigor into our State and National progress.
Agriculture, finding home markets, will be able to stand alone.
without leaning on the West; and then, in the great roll-call of
States, Alabama will stride forth a veritable giant, prouder of her
grandeur and glory than a young warrior of his first gleaming
sword and gaudy epaulettes.
On motion of Mayor W. C. JEMISON, Mr. J. L. Watkins, of
the Birmingham Daily Age, was made temporary Secretary.
On motion of Dr. PETER BRYCE, of Tuscaloosa, those gentle-
men, from this and other States, who had been requested to
attend the Convention, were invited to seats in the hall and
to participate in the proceedings thereof.
On motion of Col. T. G. BUSH, of Mobile, a Committee of
ten was appointed to select permanent officers, and to recom-
mend the plan of work with such Committees as would be nec-
essary to transact the business of the Convention.
The Chair appointed the following-named gentlemen to con-
stitute said Committee: T. G. Bush, of Mobile; A. A. Wiley,
of Montgomery; R. H. Pearson, of Birmingham; J. H. Fitts, of
Tuscaloosa; S. W. John, of Selma; George Lyon, of Demopolis;
H. R. Shorter, of Eufaula; M. L. Stansel, of Carrollton; W. B.
Wood, of Florence; and J. M. Davidson, of Centerville.
The Committee having retired for deliberation, the Hon.
JAMES L. PUGH was enthusiastically called upon to address the
Convention.
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Senator Pugh being present, responded as follows:
He said he was glad to meet such a body of representative
men, and to express his hearty approval of the objects of the
Convention. He had not given any thought to the make-up
of a speech. He accepted it as a fact that every delegate present
warmly favored the improvement of water navigation in Ala-
bama, and deepening the bay channel at Mobile for the passage
of the largest steamers. It was a useless consumption of time to
argue or discuss the transcendent importance of these im-
provements.
The question was: What was best to be done to get Congress
to make the necessary appropriations? The Convention knew
the State of Alabama was chuck full of the raw material of
wealth. It consisted of inexhaustible supplies of coal, iron,
limestone, fire-clay, kaolin, slate, copper, and vast quantities of
yellow pine. That portion of the State which contain these mar-
velous supplies is penetrated by water-ways, and these water-ways
enter into the Bay of Mobile and Pensacola, and all capable of
being made navigable by the expenditure of about three millions
of dollars. No outlay of the public money would insure a larger
return. This natural wealth, and the water-ways that would
enable capital and labor to reach it, will remain forever useless
to mankind without transportation, and the best transportation
to insure markets and cheap supplies is water transportation, for
the plain reason that it is the cheapest. Open the water-ways to
Mobile, and you certainly make it the cheapest coaling port in
the world. Ocean commerce consumes fabulous quantities of
coal, and the saving to interstate and international trade, requir
ing the transporting power of steam, can not be estimated in
figures. As soon as this cheap transportation is furnished, labor
and capital will be at once put to work to unearth and utilize
these wonderful supplies of wealth. Congress alone has the
power to make these water-ways navigable, for the reason that
Congress has extended sole jurisdiction over them by declaring
them highways.
The moment Congress declares any water course a highway for
trade and commerce, the duty attaches to keep that highway open
to navigation, and if the navigation is prevented or obstructed
by natural or other causes, Congress has the power to remove
them: and whether it will exercise that power depends upon
1
13
whether the contribution to interstate and international trade
and commerce will justify the appropriation necessary to keep
open the navigation. The practice of the Senate and House com-
mittees of taking one-third or one-half of the amount reported by
engineers as necessary for the work of the fiscal year, and dividing
that amount among the several States to secure votes, is all
wrong. The question is whether the improvement of the nav-
igation of the river or harbor will add enough benefit to inter-
state and international commerce to justify Congress in making
the appropriation? The location of the river or harbor on the
map makes no difference. If Alabama has been blessed by
nature beyond other States in her resources and rivers and har-
bors, and their development and improvement will contribute
more benefit than other States to the trade and commerce of the
country, she is entitled to the necessary appropriation, if it takes
five or ten times as much as can be profusely expended in
other States.
But the great difficulty is to get members of Congress to get out
of sight of the smoke of their own chimneys. They must see
which way the wind blows at home. The river and harbor in
my district" and "my State" must have a good grab or you
lose my vote for your river and harbor bill.
Railroad repre-
66
sentatives unite with the discontented, and load down river and
harbor bills with the most objectionable appropriations, and then
join all others in defeating the bill, as they succeeded in doing at
the last session of Congress.
The Convention will do good in showing the amount of public
interest felt in the State in securing these great improvements;
and it will be well for a committee to collect and embody in a
memorial all the facts and arguments which have heretofore been
communicated to Congress in detached portions.
T. G. BUSH, Chairman of the Committee on Permanent Organ-
ization and Work of the Convention, reported as follows:
PRESIDENT.
H. T. Toulmin, of Mobile.
VICE-PRESIDENTS.
James T. Jones, W. S. Thorington, John A. Foster, William
M. Brooks, T. J. Smitherman, A. C. Hargrove, James Crook, Z.
P. Morrison.
14
}
SECRETARIES.
W. W. Screws, L. J. Dupré, H. H. Brown, Thos. Hudson.
COMMITTEE ON HARBOR.
T. A. Hamilton, Chairman; H. Austill, J. T. Jones, J. M. Mar-
tin, David Clopton.
COMMITTEE ON WATER-WAYS.
S. A. M. Wood, Chairman; J. C. Webb, J. O. Banks, J. N. Sut-
tle, T. H. Carr, H. Harding, J. D. Weeden, J. L. Tanner, W. H.
Gardner, A. H. Moses.
COMMITTEE ON MINERAL RESOURCES AND TIMBER.
J. W. Burke, Chairman; C. Cadle, Jr., E. A. Smith, J. T. Prince,
A. O. Lane, B. A. Vaughn, W. H. Skaggs, T. H. Watts, Jr.
COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURAL RESOURCES.
W. H. Gardner, Chairman; W. A. Walker, J. C. H. Jones, F.
G. Lyon, T. J. Rutledge, A. C. Hargrove, G. M. Everhart, T. G.
Fowler.
That the hours for meeting shall be from 10 o'clock a. M. to 3
o'clock P. M. Evening sessions to commence at 7 P. M.
On motion of the Hon. J. H. Bankhead, members of the press
were invited to occupy seats at the reporters' table.
The following are the names of the delegates enrolled as mem-
bers of the Convention :
Anniston-T. K. Scott, G. W. Foster, W. M. Ryals, J. B. Reese,
J. J. Willet.
Bibb Co.-W. Webb, W. T. Waller, W. C. Cross, J. L. Davidson,
J. N. Suttle, J. S. Gardner, E. Kennedy, C. Cadle, Jr., W. J. Nicol-
son, P. P. Clarkson, J. H. Courson, W. F. Goodson, T. J. Smither-
man.
15
Birmingham-A. O. Lane, J. B. Boddie, J. W. McConnell, C. M.
Hays, L. W. Johns, J. A. Yeates, B. H. F. Hoene, J. R. Smith, J.
L. Watkins, J. T. Pierce, G. M. Cruikshank, R. Jemison, R. H.
Pearson, W. A. Walker, Jr.
Barbour Co.-J. A. Foster, H. R. Shorter.
Carrollton J. A. Billups, J. L. Hunnicutt, M. L. Stansel, J. C.
H. Jones, J. K. P. Martin, J. R. Long.
Columbus, Miss.-J. O. Banks, D. P. Blair, J. T. Harrison, B. A.
Vaughn, D. F. Robertson.
Cullman-G. A. Prinz.
Cherokee Co.-James A. Reeves.
Demopolis-T. G. Cornish, J. C. Webb, C. B. Whitfield, J. T.
Jones, F. G. Lyon, G. G. Lyon, N. G. Winn.
Eutaw-E. Morgan, W. O. Monroe, J. Cohn, J. B. Head, G.
Braume, W. W. Hill, J. P. McQueen, T. C. Clark, W. C. Oliver, J.
McKee Gould.
Florence-Z. P. Morrison, C. H. Patton, J. S. Kennedy, Jr., J. M.
Crow, W. B. Wood.
Fayette Co.-J. H. Bankhead, H. M. Bell.
Gadsden-W. H. Standifer, J. C. Whitlock, L. L. Dean, J. L.
Tanner.
Gainesville-D. H. Williams, L. D. Godfrey, E. N. Kring, N. W.
Trimble.
Greensboro-W. N. Knight, L. J. Lawson, W. B. Inge, J. H. Jack,
J. P. Powers, A. M. Avery.
Huntsville-John D. Weeden, M. C. Baldridge.
Jasper-L. B. Musgrove, W. J. Kelly.
Jacksonville James Crook.
Lamar Co.--W. A. Young.
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}
Livingston-J. H. Little, B. F. Riley, J. J. Altman, R. Chap-
man, W. H. Sledge, J. W. Pharis, J. M. Hennegan.
Monterallo-E. G. Walker.
Montgomery-D. Clopton, G. M. Everhart, W. W. Screws, A.
Fitzpatrick, T. H. Carr, W. S. Thorington, A. A. Wiley, S. A.
Wood, T. H. Watts, Jr., T. J. Rutledge.
Mobile-Z. M. P. Inge, E, Ledyard, W. S. Foster, W. G. Little,
T. S. Fry, Geo. L. Hopkins, J. J. Botter, Adam Glass, J. W.
Burke, T. G. Bush, W. T. West, L. Brewer, E. R. Weems, S.
Fiestorazzi, Mark Lyons, S. Brown, F. Forcheimer, O. F. Cawthon,
W. H. Kon, H. F. Wilson, G. Horton, H. T. Toulmin, H. Pillans,
H. Austill, W. C. Sanders, R. Sheridan, Jr., P. C. Hannan, T. W.
McDonald, W. H. Gardner, George G. Duffee, E. B. Vaughn, T. A.
Hamilton, W. G. Clarke, G. B. Clarke, R. B. Owen.
Marion-Thomas Hudson, J. F. Bailey, A. C. Howze.
Marshall Co.-Solomon Palmer.
Morgan Co.-J. M. Hinds, C. C. Sheats.
Opelika-B. H. Kieser.
Pensacola, Fla.-L. H. Sellers, J. D. Wolfe.
Sheffield-A. H. Moses.
Selma-W. M. Brooks, N. H. R. Dawson, E. T. Fowlkes, E. D.
Bowles, G. H. Peacock, J. T. Knowlen, R. L. Wetmore, J. M. Ded-
man, S. W. John.
Tuskegee-W. C. McIver.
Tuscaloosa J. H. Fitts, P. Bryce, W. C. Jemison, S. A. M. Wood,
B. Friedman, E. N. C. Snow, A. B. McEachin, H. H. Brown, N.
H. Browne, F. S. Moody, A. C. Hargrove, H. P. Walker, G. A.
Searcy, W. R. Dodson, J. T. Searcy, T. N. Hays, Wm. G. Coch-
17
7
rane, J. Collier Foster, S. T. Palmer, J. T. Garner, Wm. Hester,
A. Hill, Jas. R. Maxwell, A. Toxey, S. M. Cowden, Jas. White, S.
F. Nunnelee, E. A. Smith, H. Harding.
Tuscumbia-Guido Luddeman, J. W. Cooper.
Talladega-W. II. Skaggs.
Uniontown—T. G. Fowler, E. W. Booker, P. H. Pitts, Jr., J. M.
Phillips, J. B. Christian, L. T. Bradfield, J. G. Chisholm.
Wetumpka-Thos. Williams, O. Kyle.
Washington, D. C.-L. J. Dupre.
Col. E. L. CORTHELL, of New York, Chief Engineer of the
Tehauntepec Ship Railway, and representative of Col. James B.
Eads, was called upon to address the Convention. After display-
ing a large map of the world, Col. Corthell explained in a forci-
ble manner the great advantages of the proposed ship railway
to the United States, and especially to the Gulf States.
The Convention then adjourned to 7 o'clock P. M.
EVENING SESSION.
The Convention was called to order by the President.
Mr. SKAGGS, of Talladega, moved that a committee of three be
appointed to make a report expressing the sense of this Conven-
tion as to the Tehuantepec Ship Railway. The motion was car-
ried and the committee appointed, as follows: W. H. Skaggs, R.
H. Pearson and J. T. Harrison.
The following report was made from the Committee on Mineral
Resources of Alabama by Gen. JOSEPH W. BURKE, Chairman :
18
MINERAL RESOURCES OF ALABAMA.
In the short time allotted the Committee on the Mineral Re-
sources of the State, it is found impossible to do justice to so vast
a subject, and this report must necessarily be brief and super-
ficial.
COAL, IRON AND OTHER MINERALS.
Mr. McCullough, an English writer of the highest authority,
speaking of the value of coal as an element of English prosperity,
says: "Our coal mines are the principal source and foundation
of our manufacturing and commercial prosperity, and no Nation,
however favorably situated in other respects, not plentifully sup-
plied with this mineral, need hope to rival those that are. Our
coal mines have conferred a thousand times more real advantages
on us than we have derived from the conquest of the Mogul Em-
pire, or than we should have reaped from the dominions of Mex-
ico and Peru."
Chevalier (another eminent writer on statistics) in 1850, speak-
ing of England, estimated, even at that date, that coal had given
her a propelling force equal to 10,000,000 of horses and 60,000,000
of men.
Eubanks, also about the same date, estimated that coal, with
the power of steam, had given England a productive power equal
to the labor of 400,000,000 of men, with, at that time, not more
than 1,000,000 persons superintending the machines (many of
whom were boys and girls of twelve to fifteen years of age); yet
each, by means of this mineral, was invested with a giant's power
equal to the physical energies of 400 men, or one-twenty-fifth
part of her then population exercised a power equal to the physi-
cal exertions of one-half the grown inhabitants of the globe.
A recent writer in France, M. Menier, says: "If we should at-
tempt to spin by hand all the cotton which England manufact-
ures in a year by machines carrying 1,000 spindles each, it would
require 91,000,000 men, or the total population of France, Austria
and Russia combined."
These authorities are alluded to, since the development of the
coal and iron industries of Alabama is now admitted to be one of
the greatest and most substantial bases of our new-born commer-
cial prosperity. It is eminently proper, then, in this Convention,
called to devise a plan by which the great water-courses running
19
up from tide water to our unrivaled coal fields may be improved,
that a brief sketch of those fields should be given.
The coal area of the United States is estimated at 192,000
square miles. Of this large body, the Alabama coal fields con-
tain 5,380 square miles; the Warrior, 5,000; the Cahawba, 230;
and the Coosa 150 square miles.
These divisions take their names from the respective rivers―
Warrior, Cahawba, and Coosa-which flow through them. From
these streams branch out in all directions innumerable creeks,
subdividing the coal measures, and affording, especially in the
case of the Warrior, many miles of deep water nine months in
the year, thus enabling the coal to be mined far up in the inte-
rior and floated to the main stream. Human skill could not
have devised a more perfect system of internal canals, or auxil-
iary water-courses, than nature has provided on the Warrior.
Branching off in all directions, those creeks cut their way
through the measures, and, in many cases, flow over solid beds of
coal. During the summer months this river is not navigable
above Tuscaloosa. In fact, it is almost at the very verge of the
coal measures in Tuscaloosa that the obstructions to navigation
commence, caused by the structure of the coal measures them-
selves.
THE WARRIOR COAL FIELD.
This magnificent deposit of coal takes its name from the War-
rior River, which, finding its source in the mountainous country
bordering the coal measures of the State of Alabama on the
north, runs directly through them, flowing into the Tombigbee
River at Demopolis, Alabama, and thence onward into the Ala-
bama River and the Gulf of Mexico, at Mobile, a distance of a
little over three hundred and fifty miles.
For thirty years the hardy farmers, living amidst the mount-
ains of the Warrior region, unskilled in the art of mining, lit-
erally quarried from the bed of the Warrior, and its tributary
streams, coal of the finest quality, and, loading it in rudely
constructed barges, braved the perils of the rapids and shoals
and landed it in Mobile. Here the universal testimony is that,
for domestic and gas purposes, it was preferable to the foreign coal.
The construction of railroads, although forty miles distant, the
precarious nature of the navigation and the decline in the price
of coal, caused a total suspension of the business of boating, or,
20
}
as it was termed, rafting coal, on the Warrior. On the eastern
edge of the great field the development has been phenomenal
within the space of ten years.
Twelve years ago the total coal production amounted to but
10,000 tons. In 1880 the output increased to 600,000 tons; in
1882, to 1,100,000 tons; in 1884, to 1,500,000 tons; and it is be-
lieved that the product of 1885 will not be less than 2,000,000 tons.
For the same period the production of pig iron increased from
60,000 to 600,000 tons. This unparalleled industrial advancement
was mainly made possible by the construction of a single line of
railway, managed with sagacity and the very personification of
enterprise. To the construction of the Louisville & Nashville
Railroad is this magnificent coal field chiefly indebted for its
wonderful development, its thriving mining towns, its populous
agricultural colonies, and the City of Birmingham. And yet.
this line but skirts the very verge of the Warrior field on the
east. The Alabama Great Southern Railway runs through its
southern border, and the Georgia Pacific Railway, built to its
western and eastern boundaries, is located centrally through the
basin over a gap of forty miles. The coal of the Locust Fork, or
eastern part of the field, is renowned for its valuable qualities
for cokeing, steam, gas, and forge purposes. The great Pratt Seam
furnishes the greater body of the coke which is used by the
furnaces in Birmingham.
The Warrior Seam furnishes the very finest steam coal; the
Newcastle, gas coal of an excellent quality. In addition to these
mines are the Jefferson and the Black Creek Seams. The Locust,
or Little Warrior River, and its tributaries, penetrates all those
seams. On the Mulberry Branch of the Big Warrior the coal
changes its character entirely. Here it is hard, compact, lus-
trous, breaking into cubes, clean and not affected by the weather.
It is in this part of the field that occurs the cannel coal spoken
of by Professor Tuomey, State Geologist (1865):
"This, of all the coal in the State, will best bear transportation
on account of its superior hardness," said this distinguished
scholar.
Along the banks of the river, in the counties of Tuscaloosa and
Walker, the coal outcrops for miles, and may be loaded in barges
at the very mine entrance. Dipping toward the river the seams
drain into it, as the coal in many places has an elevation of but
three degrees, just sufficient for drainage. The seams already
I
}
21
discovered, which may be mined with profit and transported
by water, are five in number, the smallest seam being 3 feet.
2 inches, and the largest 8 feet 4 inches.
In many places three of those seams may be found superim-
posed on each other, and visible to the eye on the river bank, two
above the reach of high water. It is this part of the great War-
rior Basin that is most accessible by water. In it may be found
all classes of bituminous coals, and it is thought to be the only
part of the field in which cannel coal has been discovered. Its
mineral wonders are almost incredible. "Notwithstanding the
definite character and value of the information presented here, no
one feels more sensibly than I do how very inadequately it rep-
resents this magnificent formation," wrote Professor Tuomey in
the Geological Report of Alabama in 1850. Its variety of coals,
the ease and cheapness with which they may be mined, their
great value for commercial purposes, and the convenience of the
mines to the Gulf of Mexico, render it a National reproach that
those magnificent deposits should be closed by law to human en-
terprise, which is actually the case.
THE CAHAWBA FIELD.
The Cahawba Coal Field has an area of about 230 square miles,
and lies in the counties of Bibb, Shelby, and Jefferson. Its gen-
eral direction is from north-east to south-west. It is drained
by the Cahawba River.
The field is now being worked at the following points: At
Briarfield and Blocton, in Bibb County; Helena and Aldrich,
in Shelby County, and Henry-Ellen, in Jefferson County.
The mines at Briarfield and Aldrich are on the East Ten-
nessee, Virginia & Georgia Railroad; at Blocton, on the Alabama
Great Southern; at Helena, on the Louisville & Nashville; at
Henry-Ellen, on the Georgia Pacific, or on branches from these
roads.
There are now seven or eight seams being worked in the field,
varying in thickness from three to seven feet; and there are sev-
eral more that can be worked advantageously. Almost the
entire area of the field is underlaid with workable seams.
The mines in operation find a demand for all that they can mine.
Mr. Richard P. Rothwell, the eminent mining engineer, after a
thorough examination of the coals of the Cahawba Field, says:
22
"The Cahawba coals are of a remarkably fine quality, being
chiefly distinguished for their dryness, small amount of ash
and large amount of fixed carbon. Some of the coals make an
excellent coke, suitable for blast furnace use, and, as some of them
are dry-burning coals that do not coke, they would probably work
raw in the furnace.
The coals are also distinguished for their hardness, freedom
from sulphur and never-slacking quality.
For steam, gas, and domestic use, they rank high in the mar-
kets, and are sold largely in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Missis-
sippi, Louisiana, and Texas.
THE COOSA FIELD.
The Coosa Field has an area of 150 miles, and is chiefly sit-
uated in St. Clair, Calhoun, and Etowah Counties.
Until a very recent date this field was entirely undeveloped.
The construction of the East and West Alabama and the Georgia
Pacific Railroads through it has brought it into more favorable
notice; and the Government improvements on the Coosa River,
now in progress below Greensport, in St. Clair County, Alabama,
will cause it to take an important position as a very potent factor
in the industrial development of Northern Georgia and North
Alabama.
The seams of coal in this field are from three feet to five feet in
thickness, and the product is justly regarded as excellent for
steam purposes.
Of all the coals in the State, that of the Coosa is highest in car-
bon and lowest in combined volatile matter, and, should it prove
successful as a furnace fuel, this part of the State will become a
very important iron producing center, iron ores of rare quality
being found in abundance side by side with the best limestone.
There is one remarkable fact connected with the Alabama coal
fields, which, in relation to their geographical location, gives
them enormous advantages over that of any other bodies of coal
in America.
England is enabled to supply the world with cheap coal, owing
to the fact of the location of her principal mines near tide water.
The Alabama coal fields are the only great body of coal on the
Atlantic Coast of America so situated as to enable the miner to
load his coal-barge on the river banks of the Warrior, Cahawba,
Г
1.
23
and Coosa Rivers, and float them to the tide, the physical obstacles
to their progress being, of course, first removed.
It may be said that the same may be accomplished by the way of
Pittsburgh and the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers; but whilst this
is a physical fact, the great distance of Pittsburgh from the Gulf
of Mexico, the vicissitudes of climate-frost in the winter and
heat in the summer-with low water, make this practically nuga-
tory, as Pittsburgh has never yet been able to export coal out of
New Orleans.
The opening of the Warrior, Coosa, and Cahawba Rivers would
increase the coal export trade of the United States 3,000,000
tons, and leave all parts of the Gulf independent of Great
Britain.
OUR IRON INDUSTRIES.
"Unless all evidence and calculation are at fault, the iron and
coal regions of Alabama, within range of cheap production, are
practically inexhaustible," says a distinguished writer of this
State. The marvelous growth of the iron industry in Alabama
is almost equal to that of coal. At first her valuable ores were
reduced by charcoal, making iron of quality equal to the best
product of Sweden.
After the discovery of cokeing coal in the vicinity of Bir-
mingham, a remarkable impetus was given this industry, which
has made such great progress that it is estimated that the manu-
factured products of iron in Birmingham alone amount to
$20,000 per diem. The cheapness with which iron may be
made in Alabama is owing to the fact that the coal, ore, and
fluxing material are found in many places within sight of the
furnace stack. The ores are rich in iron, easily mined, and
found in the most luxuriant abundance. The Red Mountain,
from which Birmingham draws the great supply of her ores,
takes its name from its magnificient veins of red fossiliferous
ores, and is literally a mountain of iron, extending from Bibb
County, Alabama, to the Georgia line, a distance of over one hun-
dred and twenty-five miles. On the Louisville & Nashville and
Alabama Great Southern Railroads, and the Mineral Railroad of
Birmingham, the brown hematite, or limonite, ores exist in great
abundance. It is from these great mineral deposits that Bir-
mingham draws her wealth, and her right to the appellation of
"The Magic City."
24
On the East Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia Railroad the
iron industry is in a healthful and progressive condition, and on
this great line of railroad have sprung up towns and villages from
its establishment. The City of Anniston is a notable example of
this, increasing in five years from a small village to a large and
prosperous town. On this line of railway there are in Alabama
ten furnaces renowned for the character of their product, making
daily an average of four hundred tons of pig iron, of a very
excellent quality, and used in the manufacture of car-wheels, bar-
iron, and other branches of iron manufacture where "pig" of the
best character is desired, and Shelby, Anniston, Briarfield, and
Tecumseh high-grade irons are known all over the country.
It is a fact worth noting that during the recent prostration in
the iron trade, with its steady and constantly increasing depres-
sion since 1880, but one furnace in Alabama suspended opera-
tions, and much of our iron found its way into the great mar-
kets of the East, being sold there, after having been hauled 800
miles, one dollar a ton lower than Pennsylvania iron.
The matter of cheap transportation affects our iron products.
equally with our coal; and when this problem is solved, Ala-
bama will lead the markets of the world in the cheapness and
excellence of both these commodities.
J. W. BURKE, Chairman.
On motion of Gen. S. A. M. WooD, the Committee on Per-
manent Organization was instructed to report a plan for the
carrying out of the objects of this Convention.
The Convention adjourned until Wednesday morning at 10
o'clock.
25
1
SECOND DAY.
MORNING SESSION.
The Convention met pursuant to adjournment. President
TOULMIN in the chair.
Judge W. B. WOOD, of Lauderdale County, having been
called away, the Hon. C. H. Patton was appointed to fill his
place on the Committee on Permanent Organization.
The following letter from Senator JOHN T. MORGAN to the
Convention was then read by the Hon. John M. Martin, of
Tuscaloosa :
To the President of the Internal Improvement Convention at Tuscaloosa:
DEAR SIR-I am prevented by the state of health of a member
of my family from attending the Convention (to which I have
the honor of an invitation) to assemble at Tuscaloosa on the
17th inst.
The meeting will be of importance to the people of Alabama,
and I hope it will result in strengthening their confidence in the
great destiny that seems to await us as an agricultural, manufact-
uring, and commercial State.
Nature has placed us in an advanced position with respect to
three great industries-cotton, iron, and lumber; and has pro-
vided us with an excellent sea-port; with rivers that are navigable,
reaching across the State from east to west, through the northern
part of the State; and rivers that pass through the mineral belt,
from the eastern to the western boundary of the State, and con-
center in the Bay of Mobile.
Such a combination of industrial and commercial resources,
26
with such natural facilities for transportation, is not found else-
where in the world. They create in our favor such economic
advantages as to make Alabama a leading State in the great ele-
mentary industries of the production of cotton, iron, and lumber,
and will soon give us a like advanced position in the manufacture
of these staples.
Nature has given to the South the practical monopoly in the
production of cotton and yellow pine timber; and the grouping
of the ores, fluxes, and fuel for making iron into compact areas,
where the haul is short and easy for their assembling at the fur-
naces, is so remarkably advantageous to iron production that our
State has no superior in that industry.
It becomes the duty of this generation, actively, courageously,
faithfully and honestly, to unite in their efforts to accept and
improve these benefactions of Providence, and to make them
bring forth riches for the people and honor to the Commonwealth.
This Convention is one of the essential movements in this
direction. I applaud its spirit and the beneficent purposes for
which it has met. I regret more than I can express the necessity
which detains me from its deliberations. I have requested my
friend, Hon. John M. Martin, to lay this letter before the Con-
vention, considering it my duty to make a response to the invi-
tation of your Committee to participate in the meeting.
In stating my views as to the powers of Congress and the con-
stitutional foundations on which they rest, I do not assume that
I, alone, am right; and, finding myself in harmony of action
with some who differ with me in opinion as to the limitations on
the powers of Congress, there is no occasion for any of us to relax.
our efforts to benefit the country because of such differences. My
idea of the proper system of river improvement in Alabama has.
been, first, to gain an easy entrance for ships up to the wharvest
at Mobile, so as to facilitate the commerce with the outer world
that our rivers and railroads can supply in such wonderful rich-
ness and abundance.
That point has been, in effect, secured, and the future appro-
priations needed to widen and deepen the channel are as certain
as they can be for any public works in any part of the Union.
We have seventeen feet of water in a straight and safe channel,
extending out to the sea, that will stand with a permanency
equal to that of the banks of a river. The only open question
is: How deep and how wide shall the channel be made beyond
what it is now?
27
Coal, iron, cotton, and lumber will draw the ships to the port,
and no trouble need be apprehended that all the coast States, at
least, will so far consult their own interests as to aid us in mak-
ing the channel of sufficient depth and width to accommodate
the largest ships that they will want to load with our exports.
So much having been done, and the future being so secure, it
is time that we had gone earnestly to work in providing cheap
and abundant transportation to the Bay of Mobile for our pro-
ductions.
In two years' time the Muscle Shoals Canal will be finished,
and that will relieve Alabama from the annual charge for the
money required for that work.
This charge has delayed other works in Alabama by cutting
down the appropriations that were fairly due to such improve-
ments, because nearly the whole sum absorbed by the Muscle
Shoals Canal has been considered in Congress as an Alabama
appropriation.
In fact, Chattanooga, Knoxville, Memphis, St. Louis, Louis-
ville, Cincinnati, and New Orleans are far more interested in the
Muscle Shoals Canal than any town in Alabama can be. The
next important works to facilitate commerce between Alabama
and the outside world are, in my opinion, the opening of the
Coosa and of the Warrior Rivers, so as to connect the navigable
waters below the obstructions in each with the navigable waters.
above the shoals.
These works should progress simultaneously, as they are both
directed to the same great end of supplying the commodities of
commerce to the world through the Port of Mobile.
The Bigbee, Cahawba, and Tallapoosa Rivers are valuable
accessories to this system of navigation and commercial transit,
and are properly included in it.
I will not now discuss the question of the improvement of other
rivers in Alabama that are not connected with this system of
navigable waters.
I do not know that any question affecting them will come before
this Convention.
As something has been said in the public journals of Alabama
as to the building of canals to connect rivers and lakes with each
other, over routes that are not the natural channels of navigable
waters, I deem it my duty to briefly define what I believe to be
the limit of the powers of Congress in such matters.
3
28
There is a limit to the powers of Congress, far inside of a bound-
less discretion, in appropriating money for public works. Con-
gress can not expend money for public works, even if they are
for the general welfare, in the same discretionary way that it may
for the public defense against an enemy.
Discretion is not the boundary of such powers in the Consti-
tution. The purpose must be the general welfare; it must relate
to some specific duty or right of the Federal Government, and
the improvement must be on property that is under the control
of the Government. These are all constitutional restrictions on
the right of Congress to improve rivers and harbors with the use
of public money. I do not deny the power of Congress to im-
prove the navigation of rivers and harbors, either from the "gen-
eral welfare" clause, or from the power to regulate commerce with
foreign countries, or between the States.
The "general welfare" clause is not a grant of power to Con-
gress. On the contrary, it is a restraint on the power of Congress
to tax the people. The power "to regulate commerce between the
States" does not give to Congress the right to regulate commerce
within a State. If this is not too plain for argument, it is, at least,
too well settled by the Supreme Court to be denied. If Congress
had no power to improve the Warrior River, other than the power
"to regulate commerce between the States," nothing could be
done by Congress to improve it, as that river is entirely within
the limits of the State.
Then, whence does the power to improve a navigable river
come? I answer, it comes from the control that each State has
granted, or conceded, to the United States over all the navigable
waters within her borders. I do not mean the title to the banks,
or to the beds beneath the navigable waters, or to the fisheries, or
other easement or privilege in the waters, but the free right of
navigation to the people of all the United States alike, and to the
Government for any public purpose.
Speaking on this subject, Chief Justice Waite, in McCready vs.
Virginia, 4 Otto, 394, says: "The title (of the State) thus held
is subject to the paramount right of navigation, the regulation of
which, in respect to foreign and interstate commerce, has been
granted to the United States."
In Mobile vs. Kimball, 102 U. S. Rep., the Supreme Court says:
"The improvement of harbors, bays and navigable rivers within
the States falls within the last category of cases. The control of
29
Congress over them is to secure freedom in their navigation, so
far as that is essential to their commercial power." Each of the
States admitted into the Union, after the adoption of the Consti-
tution, made a distinct cession to the United States of the free
right to navigate its waters.
This was done in order to make the States equal and to secure
to the people of each State the privilege and immunities of citi-
zens in the several States. The right to navigate the Sacramento
is as free to a citizen of Alabama as the right to navigate the War-
rior is to a citizen of California. The right is held by a cession of
each State to the United States for the benefit of all the people.
But this right relates to navigable waters, and not to rights of
way for railroads or canals. The United States thus holding and
controlling the public use of the navigable waters within a State,
has, necessarily, the correlative right to provide for their safe.
navigation as channels of commerce, or for any other public pur-
pose. The United States has the right to improve any property
that it has the right to control, whether its title is absolute or
qualified. The custom-house in Mobile is an illustration of the
rightful exercise of this power to improve the property of the
United States.
Talladega Creek, tributary to the Coosa River, is not a naviga-
ble stream, and the Government has so declared by running the
land survey across it, and by selling its waters and its bed to pri-
vate owners.
The Coosa River is a navigable stream, although no vessel can
navigate it for many miles above and below the mouth of Talla-
dega Creek. The Government has so declared by stopping its
land surveys on the banks of the Coosa, thus dedicating that river
to the people, for the purpose of navigation, forever.
The Government thus reserved the control of this river for the
purpose of navigation, and assumed this corresponding duty of
removing the obstructions to navigation, so as to make it a use-
ful channel of commerce.
The law is now settled, that the admiralty jurisdiction of the
United States extends to such waters, to the exclusion of any
similar jurisdiction, on the part of the State, showing, in this
and in other ways, the jurisdiction and the responsibility of the
United States for the free and convenient navigation of waters
thus placed under their control by the action of the States.
It follows, from these facts and principles, that Congress may
30
appropriate money to clean out obstructions to navigation in
any stream in Alabama, where it has stopped its land surveys on
the shores. Such streams are dedicated to free navigation by the
act of the Government, and the people of Maine, as much as the
people of Alabama, have the right to say whether Congress shall
or shall not apply money to improve them as channels of com-
merce.
So I hold that the power of Congress to appropriate money for
river improvements is limited by the fact of their dedication to
public use as navigable waters.
I do not find that the States have ever conceded to Congress
the right to dig canals within their borders to connect streams or
lakes that are not in the line of the natural flow of their waters,
or to build railroads through their domain, and I do not believe
that such power exists. Hence I oppose such projects as the ap-
propriation of public money of the United States to build a canal
to connect the Mississippi River with Lake Michigan, between
Rock Island and Chicago. There are no navigable waters con-
necting these points, and there is no "paramount right of naviga-
tion" there for the United States to protect or improve.
If we plant our right to the assistance of the United States in
improving our navigable waters upon firm and undeniable con-
stitutional grounds, we shall not need to enter into bargains, or
combinations, with those who claim like assistance for projects
that rest on grounds that are inadmissible or questionable. We
stand on a firm foundation of constitutional authority in asking
Congress to make reasonable appropriations for opening the navi-
gation of the Coosa and Warrior Rivers. The contributions to
the commerce of the country that will reach the Gulf of Mexico
through these navigable streams, will repay the expenditure
many hundred-fold, in the course of fifty years, to the people at
large. Increase of wealth, population and general prosperity,
which are the true aims of free government, will, in a little while,
prove that no like sum of money was ever expended in works of
public improvement in the United States that have yielded
greater advantages to the country. I believe firmly in the doc-
trine that the personal enterprise of the people who occupy a
country is worth more in advancing its prosperiiy than any
amount of money that can be bestowed upon it as a gratuity.
No country can thrive whose people lack faith in its prosperity
and self-reliance to develop it.
31
.
!
But the Coosa and Warrior Rivers are public property. They
can not be relegated to private ownership, as railroads are held in
the hands of stockholders. Their dedication to public uses is a
final and irrevocable act, in which the State made the concession
and the United States accepted the trust. One man has as much
right to navigate them as another. They can not be conveyed or
condemned into private ownerehip. If that could be done, the
monopoly of their navigation would make them the best property
of the kind on this hemisphere.
Can it be said to be right or just that the Government of the
United States should permit these rivers to remain closed to navi-
gation while private enterprise is forbidden to attempt to open
them?
Men and capital could be readily found to open these channels,
through which incalculable wealth will flow out to the Gulf of
Mexico, if the ownership and control of the navigation could be
confined to a private company. Either line of navigation, from
the mineral region to Mobile, would be at least as valuable as a
railroad for the whole distance, and that of the Coosa would cost
$1,800,000 and of the Warrior $500,000.
It is very obvious that the monopoly of this transportation
from our unequaled mineral and timber lands would at once
command the capital to open the navigation of these rivers. But
this can not be; and it remains as a plain duty of Congress to
the people of the United States to do this great work.
Our railroad system is incomplete. A great trunk line along the
western water-shed of the Alabama River, to correspond with and
balance up that already completed to the east of that river, is a
commercial necessity that private enterprise will soon meet.
To prevent that line, when it is built, from monopolizing the
transportation of the vast amount of traffic that our mineral
regions must send to the Gulf, we shall need the navigation of
the Coosa and the Warrior as competitors with the railroads.
There need be no fear that they will not all have full employ-
ment. Our trade with Central and South America, added to that
of the dense populations that will soon flood in upon our invit-
ing country, will throng the Gulf of Mexico with fleets of ships
more numerous than those that plough the waters of the Mediter-
ranean Sea. Besides, a trans-isthmian canal is now as certain of
construction within ten years' time as the Canadian Pacific Rail-
road was ten years ago.
32
The world has determined to have a canal, and I earnestly hope
that the United States will soon determine to give one to them.
But, whether we build it or not, it will be constructed. Whether
it be through Panama, Nicaraugua or Tehuantepec, is not so much
a matter of importance to Alabama as the fact that the tide of
commerce that it will create will flow along our coast. Through
the safe and beautiful Bay of Mobile we will meet the ships
on their journey to and from the Atlantic and Pacific with
our coal and other supplies. They will be equal in quality to
any in the world, exhaustless in quantity, and hauled cheaply
to the ships, whether by river or rail, and on a descending
grade, so that we shall have no dangerous rival in this profit-
able trade.
There is, surely, enough in these prospects to excite the liveli-
est hopes of our people, and to stimulate all who have any power
to assist in the speedy completion of these great works. The road
is now open before us, and let us follow it with confidence, for the
people of the United States, seeing the merits of our work, will
cheerfully aid in its accomplishment.
WASHINGTON, November 14, 1885.
Very respectfully,
JOHN T. MORGAN.
The following letter from the Hon. H. A. HERBERT, Represent-
ative in Congress from the Second District of Alabama, was read
by Secretary W. W. Screws:
General S. 1. M. Wood, Corresponding Secretary :
SIR-I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of invitation to
attend and take part in the deliberations of a River and Harbor
Convention called to meet in the City of Tuscaloosa on the 17th
inst., and write to express my regrets that I can not be present.
I shall be detained here by duties imposed upon me by a special
commission created by act of the last Congress.
The Convention can accomplish much good by helping to
arouse and to fix attention, both at home and throughout the
Union, upon the wonderful material development that must result
from an improvement of the natural water-ways of Alabama.
The water-shed that is drained into Mobile Bay is larger than
any other cast of the Alleghanies; and when we consider its
wealth of field, and forest and mine, it is easy to demonstrate
J
โ
9
33
:
!
}
:
::
that Alabama's sca-port, Mobile, is richer in natural resources, if
trade should go as water runs, than any other port on the Atlan-
tic or the Gulf.
Down the Warrior should go coal to Mobile so cheaply that it
would be sold there at less than two dollars per ton. When this
is accomplished, and vessels shall have, as they should and will,
twenty-two feet of water over the bar at the mouth of the bay,
coal-anthracite, though it be-will never sell again at New Or
leans for $10, at Kingston for $9.00, at St. Thomas for $9.25, and
at Aspinwall for $15-the prices paid by our Government during
the past fiscal year. The coal markets of the Gulf of Mexico and
of the Caribbean Sea, and largely of South America, will belong
to Alabama.
But more than this; with the improvement of the Coosa, the
Cahawba and the Warrior, and of Mobile Harbor, there would
come to our Queen City of the Gulf not only cheap cotton and
wheat and wood, but cheaper iron and cheaper coal than come
to any city washed by salt water in America.
Mobile will then necessarily become great in manufactures and
in commerce. To accomplish all these results will require the
expenditure of large sums of money. The Tennessee, too, in the
northern portion of our State, though the great canal around the
shoals approaches completion, still needs extensive appropria-
tions. In fact, it would be an easy matter to show before your
Convention that the General Government can expend more
money judiciously in the waters of Alabama than of any other
State in the Union.
Your Convention can be useful in developing that fact, and
urging it upon Congress. Yet the practical men assembled there
will not lose sight of the fact that many other sections of our
Union are sadly in need of river and harbor improvement, and
are pressing their claims upon Congress. Theorists may say that
appropriations should be aggregated and placed where they would
do most good; but such an enactment as this would be, in a river
and harbor bill, has never yet been made by a representative.
legislature. New Jersey would no more vote money to finish all
the improvements of rivers in Michigan, and allow her own to
wait until Michigan had enough, than would the present repre-
sentatives of Alabama be content to stop the work on her rivers
until the navigable streams in Florida had been developed. The
utmost then that can expected is that, when Federal aid is ex-
34
1
tended, it shall be given with liberal hand, and that the absolute
and relative importance of Alabama's rivers and harbors shall be
given due prominence.
For one, I believe the true and practical mode of reducing
freights and fares for the people is the improvement of our water
ways. Such has been, I think, the belief of all the representa-
tives in Congress from Alabama for years past, and a glance at
the amounts appropriated for work on rivers and harbors in the
State and outside of it, will show that they have not been idle in
this direction.
But, however earnest in the cause Alabama's Congressmen may
be, they can be much aided by the labors of such a body of men
as will doubtless assemble in your city on the 17th inst.
Wishing them much success in their patriotic undertaking, I
have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
HILARY A. HERBERT.
T. A. HAMILTON, Esq., from the Committee on Harbors, made
the following report, which, after discussion, was adopted:
REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON THE IMPROVEMENT OF MOBILE
HARBOR.
Your Committee have not had time to prepare a report that
would, in their opinion, be at all commensurate with the magni-
tude and importance of the interests involved in the questions
connected with the deepening of the channel in the Harbor of
Mobile.
They will, therefore, content themselves with recommending
the adoption of the following resolutions, viz.:
1. Resolved, It is the sense of this Committee that the present
ship channel of Mobile Harbor should be deepened and widened
at the earliest practicable period, so as to allow free ingress and
egress to and from the wharves of Mobile for the largest sea-going
vessels employed in the navigation of the Gulf of Mexico.
2. Resolved, That this Convention is impressed with the im-
portance of the great advantages to be derived by the com-
merce of the country, and the world, from the speedy opening
of the channel of the Bay of Mobile, so as to allow vessels
of all sizes, frequenting the Gulf of Mexico, to load and unload
their whole cargoes at the wharves of Mobile without being
Y
35
*
obliged to complete the loading or unloading of any part of their
cargoes at a distance from the city.
3. Resolved, That we would most earnestly urge it upon the
Alabama Senators and Representatives in Congress to use their
utmost efforts, at all times, to obtain from the Government of the
United States such appropriations as may be requisite, in order.
to have the channel of the Harbor of Mobile so improved and
widened as to allow the free and uninterrupted passage of fully-
laden vessels of the largest size in use in the commerce of the
Gulf of Mexico to and from the wharves of the City of Mobile.
By order of the Committee.
T. A. HAMILTON, Chairman.
OBSERVATIONS UPON THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE HARBOR OF
MOBILE IN THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE.
It seems that up to the year 1857 the Congress of the United
States had appropriated $228,838.68 to the improvement of that
part of the Harbor of Mobile known as Choctaw Pass and Dog
River Bar. The result obtained at these points was a channel ten
feet deep and two hundred feet in width through this Pass, and
of the same depth, with an unknown width, over or through Dog
River Bar.
Nothing further was attempted by the Government toward the
improvement of any part of the channel until after the close
of the civil war.
In February, 1867, some of the citizens of Mobile County, being
greatly interested in the improvement of the Harbor of Mobile,
procured the passage of an act of the Legislature of the State,
whereby the Commissioners of Revenue of Mobile County were
authorized and required to issue bonds of Mobile County to the
amount of $1,000,000, to be placed in the hands of a Board, which
was created by the same act of the Legislature, and the proceeds.
of which bonds were to be expended under the direction of that
Board in the improvement of the Bay and Harbor of Mobile.
(See page 507, Acts of Legislature, 1866-7.)
Under this Act of the Legislature the County of Mobile ex-
pended a good deal of money in an attempt to improve the har-
bor. The precise amount I have been unable to ascertain, but I
am led to believe it was somewhere in the neighborhood of $200,-
000 before the Act of February, 1867, was repealed. (See page
258, Acts Assembly, 1872–3.
36
While the County of Mobile was thus seeking to improve the
harbor, Congress, on the 11th of July, 1870, made another appro-
priation of $50,000 for the same purpose. (See 16, U. S. Stat. at
Large, 226.)
At this time my impression is there was found to be only about
nine feet of water in Choctaw Pass. A survey was then made by
the Engineering Department of the United States Government,
and in 1871 work was commenced with a view to obtaining a
channel, two hundred feet wide and thirteen feet deep, from the
wharves of the city to deep water in the lower bay.
This appropriation of July 11, 1870, of..
$50,000
Was followed by another March 3, 1881, of.
50,000
And another June 10, 1872, of
75,000
And one in March, 1873, for...
100,000
And one in June, 1874, for
•
100,000
And another in March, 1875, for..
•
26,000
Making a total of.....
$401,000
Under these appropriations the work was completed in 1876,
giving the proposed channel of 200 feet minimum width and
13 feet depth from the city wharves to deep water.
An effort was then made by parties interested in the further
improvement of the harbor to obtain appropriations from Con-
gress, in order that a channel of not less than 200 feet of minimum
width and 22 feet in depth might be obtained.
In June, 1878, Congress appropriated $10,000, to be expended
in the necessary steps to ascertain whether the channel could be
deepened to allow vessels of 22 feet draught of water to pass
from the lower anchorage to the city wharves. (20 U. S. Stat. at
Large, 154.)
Under this the United States Engineer (Major A. N. Damrell)
reported in 1879 that the surveys and tests applied indicated that
the proposed channel of 17 feet deep could be obtained at a cost
of about $820,000, or one of 21 feet deep at a cost of $1,900,000,
and recommended the project of obtaining a channel 21 feet deep,
at mean low tide, and with a minimum width of 200 feet.
The question of the proposed improvement was submitted to a
Board of Engineers, who sat at New York, and their deliberations.
resulted in their suggesting either that the dredged channel 13
37
.
:
:
i
:
:
feet deep, already in existence, should be deepened by dredging to
the depth of 17 feet, or that an artificial salt-water canal should
be substituted, with a depth of 22 feet.
This Board recommended, at the same time, in order to deter-
mine more satisfactorily as to the permanency of a dredged chan-
nel 22 feet in depth, that an experimental cut should be made in
the bottom of the bay 100 yards long, 100 feet wide and 22 feet
deep, and afterward carefully sounded, from time to time, in
order to see the effect of time and circumstances upon it.
Upon this the Congress of the United States proceeded to
make appropriations toward dredging the 13-foot channel to the
depth of 17 feet, and with the minimum width, as before stated,
of 200 feet, as follows, viz.:
March 3, 1879
June 14, 1880..
March 3, 1881 .
August 2, 1882.
July 5, 1884.
Total....
$100,000. 20 U. S. Stat. at Large.... 370
125,000. 21 U. S. Stat. at Large.... 181
100,000. 21 U. S. Stat. at Large.... 470
125,000. 22 U. S. Stat. at Large.... 194
200,000.
$650,000.
In Major Damrell's report to the United States Chief of Engi-
neers, made in the year 1884, he stated that the estimated amount
that would then be necessary to complete the proposed channel
of 200 feet wide and 17 feet deep, in addition to the amounts pre-
viously appropriated by Congress, at its last session, for the com-
pletion of this work, but in this we were greatly disappointed, the
Congress having passed no River and Harbor Bill at all.
The result is, that the work of improvement has substantially
stopped, and we are compelled to wait for another meeting of
Congress before anything can be done. Fortunately, however,
very substantial results have already been accomplished, although
there is room for much improvement still. The present mini-
mum width of the dredged channel is about 140 feet between the
tops of the slope on the two sides of the channel. This is the
width of the cut for about half the length of the channel. It is
somewhat wider at the curves at Dog River and at Fowl River,
while at Choctaw Pass it is about 290 feet in width. The mini-
mum depth of the dredged channel is about 16 feet at mean
low tide, while in some places the depth is as much as 21 feet.
38
In considering, then, the results of these improvements, we
find:
First.-The change in the appearance of the wharves of Mobile
has been very marked since the channel has become such as to
allow its use by vessels of any considerable size. Before that time,
with very few exceptions, all the vessels of any size which came
to the Bay of Mobile had to lie in the lower anchorage at a dis-
tance of about 27 miles from the city, while now there are at all
times quite a number of heavy draught vessels to be found lying.
at the wharves.
Second. Before then, the cargoes they brought in and the cotton
they carried away had nearly all to be transported to and from
the city upon lighters, at an annual cost estimated at not less
than $100,000. Not only this, but thereby the cotton and goods,
in passing upon and down the bay, were more or less liable to
damage from exposure to the weather, and it is fair to suppose
that this was a prominent reason for the Liverpool cotton mer-
chants assuming, as they did, that cotton going by way of New
Orleans arrived in better order, and so should bring a better
price than when they went by way of Mobile.
Third. Before the present improvement in the channel the
timber trade of Mobile was comparatively small. It has now
grown to be of great importance, and is constantly and largely
improving. When timber vessels had to take on their entire car-
goes in the lower bay, there was not only the expense of carrying
the rafts twenty-seven miles further to get to the shipping, but
there was always a great risk of loss from their going adrift, and
being in many cases entirely lost. Even now, as these timber
vessels are very frequently of heavy draught, it happens that a
very large proportion of them, estimated by some as high as
ninety per cent. of the whole, have to go down the bay to finish
loading.
Fourth. The necessary expenses imposed upon the commerce
of the port of Mobile for stevedores, and other such charges con-
nected with the loading and unloading of vessels coming to the
port, have been largely reduced in consequence of the parties con-
cerned being thus relieved to a considerable extent of the expense
of transportation up and down the bay, and also of their being
able to live at their homes in the city.
Fifth.-There has been heretofore expended upon the work of
deepening the channel to 17 feet the sum of $650,000. It is a fair
*
39
calculation that this expenditure has already effected a saving of
at least $100,000 a year in cost of lighterage up and down the
bay, to say nothing of savings from damage and loss of property
by reason of so much of the cotton, timber and other articles being
loaded and unloaded directly at the wharf, instead of lightered up
and down the bay for a distance of 27 miles to and from the
vessels.
Sixth.-If we should assume that the only saving that has been
effected by the expenditure of this $650,000 on the dredged chan-
nel has been the annual amount of $100,000 in the expense of
lightering, etc., still it shows an annual saving to the commerce
of the port of a trifle over sixteen per cent. upon the whole amount
that has been thus far expended upon the improvement.
Seventh. I have no means of accurate ascertainment of the ex-
tent of the timber trade of the City of Mobile, but a few days
since I saw a statement in the Mobile Register in which it was esti-
mated that it now gives constant employment to about three
thousand people, and thus furnishes the means of subsistence to
about fifteen thousand individuals.
This is, possibly, an overestimate, but still it is apparent that
a very large number of individuals are supported by this tim-
ber trade.
The present width of the 17-foot channel, however, is not by
any means sufficient for the accommodation of the shipping of
the port. The result has necessarily been that, as a rule, only
one vessel at a time, of any considerable size, can be permitted
to be passing through the channel. This, as might naturally be
expected, has given rise at times to difficulty and delay, which
can only be avoided by increasing the minimum width of the
channel to at least 200 feet; and it is evident that this should
be done at as early a day as practicable.
But, in order to furnish the proper business facilities to the
port of Mobile, the channel should be deepened at least to 23
feet, and with such a width as may be necessary for large vessels
to pass up and down without interfering with one another.
The work already done has demonstrated the fact that, at least
for a channel of 17 feet depth, the work of dredging can be relied
upon, and a channel, when thus procured, can be permanently
maintained at a moderate cost. The depth of water upon the
outer bar of Mobile Bay is, at mean low tide, about 23 feet, while
the surveys and borings heretofore made indicate that a dredged
40
channel of 23 feet in depth can be maintained as well as one 17
feet from the wharves at Mobile to the outer bar. Moreover, in
order to still further test the question, in one place in the course
of the dredged channel, and in accordance with the advice of
the Board of Engineers, before adverted to, an experimental cut
of 300 feet long, 100 feet wide and 22 feet deep was dredged in
September, 1882; and in Major Damrell's report of August 3,
1883, he says this " was sounded October 24, 1882, and again on
June 7, 1883, an interval of about seven months. A comparison
of these soundings showed less depth on the sides and ends of
the cut, with about the same average depth along the center, evi-
dently owing to the irregularities of the bottom being removed,
and the banks having assumed the natural slope, but showed no
filling due to other causes." He goes on to say : "As the mate-
rial composing the bottom is the same, or of a firmer nature, to
cluster No. 31, just south of Fowl River shoals, 16.44 miles from
the city, a channel of this depth would no doubt remain open,
and it is probable that from this point it would be comparatively
permanent, with a width of 400 feet." (See this report in Ap-
pendix M, pages 961, 962, to the annual report of U. S. Chief of
Engineers for 1883.)
I am satisfied that Major Damrell has since seen no reason to
change his views expressed by him in this report. In fact, as I
have learned from him within the last few days, his last report
to the United States Chief of Engineers (but which I believe is
not yet in print) submits a project for continuing the dredging
to the depth of 23 feet along the whole line of the present chan-
nel, so as to give a minimum width of about 240 feet midway of
the slopes, and which I suppose would be equivalent to about 280
feet at the top and 200 feet at the bottom of the cut.
I understand the estimated additional cost of procuring this
increased width and depth, after the channel of 200 feet wide and
17 feet deep shall have been completed, will be about $1,500,000.
Add to this the amount still required to be expended in order to
complete the proposed depth to 17 feet, say $240,000, and it will
make the sum total yet to be expended, in order to furnish a
dredged channel 280 feet wide at the top and 23 feet deep from
the wharves at Mobile to the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico,
about $1,740,000,
The necessity for this increased depth of water in the channel
is already upon us, We have seen that there has been a wonder-
41
?
ful increase in the timber trade of Mobile, in consequence of the
improvement in the channel which has already taken place, but
this channel is not by any means sufficient, even at this time, to
meet the requirements of the commerce of the port, while these
demands are likely to increase almost from day to day.
The greater part of the vessels now coming to the Port of Mo-
bile for cargoes of timber and of cotton, will draw, when loaded,
considerably more than the depth of water in a 17-foot channel,
some of them drawing as much as 18 to 20 feet, and even more.
The result of necessity is that all such vessels are compelled to go
down the bay to complete their loading, thereby encountering not.
only great extra expense and delay, but also exposing them at
times to the risk of heavy loss from damage and injury to the
property to be transported.
The improvement of the Harbor of Mobile is not a matter
which concerns Mobile alone. If we take a map and look at the
position of the Bay of Mobile, we find it is the outlet for a most
magnificent system of water-courses, which are well able to con-
tribute enormous wealth to the commerce of the country and of
the world.
The Alabama, with its four hundred miles of navigable length,
may be regarded as but the continuation of the Coosa River,
whose additional three hundred miles of navigation, when regu-
largly opened, will give a continuous river navigation in the in-
terior of the country, a distance of seven hundred miles or more
from the Gulf of Mexico to the City of Rome, Georgia.
Looking then in another direction, we find the Tombigbee and
Black Warrior Rivers also extending their arms far up into the
interior of the States of Alabama and Mississippi.
For many years large quanties of cotton have been transported
from the interior of Alabama and Mississippi to the Port of Mo-
bile, which should naturally be transported by sea-going vessels
from the wharves of that city. Since the work upon the chan-
nel has been in progress, a large and constantly increasing timber
trade has sprung up. This is still in its infancy, while there are
vast forests readily accessible, which as yet have scarcely been
touched, and which are capable of supplying an enormous timber
trade for many years to come.
In the last few years it seems to have become more than ever
an acknowledged fact that coal and iron are two of the principal
factors in building up the wealth and prosperity of any people.
42
In these two articles, and in the cheapness of their production,
Alabama has been highly favored. It seems now to be admitted
that iron can be produced at lower figures in the interior of Ala-
bama, and perhaps in Tennessee, than any where else in the
United States. The result is now beginning to appear in the
quantities of this mineral which are already being produced in
Alabama, while it is fair to suppose that no long time will elapse
before its export will be called for at least to other places on this
continent through the Port of Mobile.
While this is so in regard to the iron products of Alabama, the
future of the Alabama coal is still more certain. It is well
ascertained that the quantity is almost boundless. The Coosa
Coal Fields cover an area of about a hundred square miles, the
Cahawba Coal Fields about two hundred and thirty, and the War-
rior Coal Fields the enormous extent of five thousand square miles.
If we stop for a moment to contemplate these last, we find the Black
Warrior River runs through them, and that at a cost of perhaps the
comparatively insignificant sum of two hundred thousand dollars
expended upon it, this river can be so improved that barges can
readily transport coal upon its bosom to Mobile from mines in its
immediate vicinity, at an estimated cost of not exceeding fifty
cents a ton. The coal can be placed in the barges at a cost of not
exceeding $1.25 per ton, making the cost in Mobile Bay to
amount to about $1.75 per ton. So also, I suppose, the Cahawba
and Coosa Rivers can be improved so that coal from the coal
fields in their neighborhood may be furnished at about the same
cost as from the Warrior Coal Fields.
The quantity of coal that is used in the counties bordering on
the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to say nothing of
South America, is very large, and at these prices, the Alabama
coal might reasonably be expected to drive all other coals out of
these markets. I have not the data upon which to furnish any
estimate of the precise quantity that would be needed to supply
the demand, but it is evident that it would be very large. Here-
tofore but little coal has been exported from Mobile. One reason
of this has been that the demand for consumption in the neigh-
borhood of the mines has pretty well kept up with the supply,
leaving but little for exportation; and another reason is the cost
of transportation to the sea-board; but this can not always con-
tinue to be the case. The growth of the output from the Ala-
bama coal mines has been very rapid in the last few years, and
43
something like the same rapid rate of growth may reasonably be
expected in the future.
My understanding is, that the quantity of coal mined in Ala-
bama in 1872 was only about 10,000 tons. In 1879 this had
increased to about 290,000 tons; in 1880, to 400,000 tons; while
I am told that, in the last year, it reached over 1,000,000 tons.
This is only similar to what has been seen in other cases. Thus,
when the Delaware and Hudson Canal was first completed, it had
a coal trade for the
First year (1829) of only.
The next year it was.
In 1840 it was.
In 1850 it was.
•
7,000 tons.
42,000 tons.
148,000 tons.
432,000 tons.
499,000 tons.
In 1860 it was
In 1870 it was.
•
.2,300,000 tons.
I apprehend it would be difficult to overestimate the rapidity
with which the coal trade of Alabama will increase, if only the
Black Warrior River and the Harbor of Mobile should be opened
wide to the commerce of the world.
Only a few years ago (since the close of the civil war) Alabama
coal was selling in Mobile at $12 a ton, while now it is offered by
the car-load, for export trade, at $3.15 for the ton of 2,240 pounds.
It was recently estimated, by General Joseph W. Burke, the then
Collector of Customs at the Port of Mobile, and who is now here
as a member of this Convention, that, by reason of the reduction
of the cost of Alabama coal, the United States Government was
saved, in the cost of coal consumed by the few United States
vessels coaling at Mobile, about $70,000 in the space of five years,
or at the rate of about $14,000 a year. This coal now costs, for
purposes other than exportation, about $3.50 per ton, by the car-
load; but it is estimated that as soon as the rivers shall be im-
proved, so as to afford easy water, transportation from the mines.
to the sea-board, the cost of this coal at Mobile can be reduced, ast
above stated, to about $1.75 per ton.
It is estimated that the improvement of the rivers so as to
allow easy water transportation for coal from the mines to Mobile,
and such an improvement of the channel from the wharves of
Mobile to the deep water on the outer bar of Mobile Bay, as to
allow vessels of heavy draught to come up to the wharves, Mobile
a
4
44
will become one of the cheapest coal markets in the United
States. It certainly will furnish cheap coal in the Gulf of Mexico,
so that when we remember the importance of cheap coal read-
ily accessible on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico to the commerce
of the world, and also the importance of its being easily accessible
to the navy of the United States, it is not difficult to see the
importance of improving the water-ways in the interior of the
State, and also of opening the channel of the Bay of Mobile as
early as possible, so that vessels of heavy draught can readily pro-
ceed to the wharves of Mobile for coaling and other purposes.
It is not long since the Cumberland coal was sold at Baltimore,
and other points on the Atlantic Coast, at four dollars for the ton
of 2,240 pounds; but, owing to competition in various ways, I
understand the price has recently been reduced at the point of
export to about two dollars for the long ton. As we have already
seen, the lowest rate at which the Alabama coal can now be sold,
even for exportation by the car load, is $3.15 for the ton of 2,240
pounds. Of course, this gives to the shippers of the Cumberland
coal for ports on the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea and the
South American ports, a very great advantage over the Alabama
coal.
If, now, the channel of Mobile Bay were deepened to twenty-
three feet, and widened to a proper extent, and then the rivers in
the interior of the State should be so improved as to allow coal to
be water-borne from the mines to the wharves at Mobile, the cost
of Alabama coal at Mobile could be reduced to as low a figure, or,
perhaps, a lower one than that at which the Cumberland coal is
held at Atlantic ports, and the quantity which could be furnished
would be equal to any demand that could be made for it.
Mobile is believed to be already the cheapest of the Gulf ports:
that is to say, vessels can now enter the Port of Mobile and dis-
charge and receive their cargoes at less expense than at any other
of the Gulf ports; but the advantages of the port will be
very greatly increased by having the channel so deepened that
any vessel drawing twenty-three feet, or less, can proceed at once.
to the wharves of the city, there to discharge her cargo and reload
without encountering the delays, expense, and other troubles
attendant upon receiving and discharging the whole or a part of
her cargo at a distance from the city.
It is possible the future may show it would have been better, in
the long run, if a different mode of improving the channel had
45
been resorted to from that which was adopted. When we remem-
ber that after the junction of the Alabama and Tombigbee
Rivers, about fifty miles above the city, the united stream, which
is then known as the Mobile River, has an average width of 1,050
feet, and a depth of about 39.8 feet, until a short distance above.
the city, the water which had hitherto confined itself to one
channel, spreads out into several outlets, such as the Mobile, the
Spanish and the Tensaw Rivers, and so flows on through the Bay
of Mobile for some thirty miles, when it passes into the Gulf of
Mexico. It is not difficult to suppose that the engineering skill
of the United States could, without much difficulty, have con-
tinued something like the same single channel of 1,050 feet wide.
and 40 feet deep, until it emptied itself into the Gulf of Mexico.
In fact, something like this was one of the projects submitted
to the Board of Engineers which sat in New York in the winter
of 1879-80; but it was determined, in view of the then existing
circumstances and the commerce of the port as it then stood, that
it would be better, for the time at least, to rely upon dredging
out the channel then already in existence to the depth of 17 feet
and a width of 200 feet, at the same time using certain tests to
determine the practicability and propriety of afterward increas-
ing the depth of the channel from 17 to 23 feet.
As we have already seen, the tests resorted to in order to deter-
mine the practicability of dredging to the depth of 23 feet have
resulted in satisfying the engineer officer in charge of the entire
practicability of dredging out and maintaining a permanent
channel of 23 feet in depth, and he has accordingly submitted to
the United States Chief of Engineers a project for proceeding im-
mediately to deepen the dredged channel to that extent, and
widening it to say 280 feet between the tops of the slopes.
His estimate is that the cost of completing the present project.
of a channel 17 feet deep and 200 feet wide will be about $240,000,
and the additional cost of increasing the depth to 23 feet, and the
width between the tops of slopes to 280 feet, will be about $1,500,-
000, making a total of additional appropriations of about $1,740,-
000 needed for the work.
As I understand it, it is always the case that the larger the
appropriation for work of this sort, within certain limits, the
cheaper will be the ultimate cost of the work and the quicker
will the desired result be accomplished. Small appropriations
delay the ultimate completion and add greatly to the expense,
46
while large appropriations cheapen the cost and hasten the com-
pletion of the work.
In the case of the channel at Mobile, it is, perhaps, specially
important that work should be commenced as early as practi-
cable, with the view of obtaining the 23-foot channel, and also
that the appropriations should be large. As I understand it, it
is highly important that the depth of 23 feet be obtained as early
as possible to such an extent as to allow vessels drawing some-
thing like that quantity of water to pass up and down the chan-
nel. This can be accomplished by the early expenditure of about
$500,000, and nothing less than this will bring it about. Until
this is done, many of the vessels now coming to the Port of Mo-
bile (perhaps a large majority of them) will be compelled here-
after, as heretofore, to discharge and receive parts of their cargoes
while lying in the lower bay and at a distance from the city.
When this $500,000 shall have been expended, we must remem-
ber, still the work will only have been in part accomplished, and
not until the full proposed width and depth of channel has been
attained can we hope to see the full benefit of the work.
T. A. HAMILTON.
雕
​MOBILE, November 11, 1885.
Mr. T. G. BUSH, Chairman, from the Committee on Permanent
Organization, made the following report:
Your Committee respectfully recommend that this Convention
appoint the following Committee to memorialize Congress on the
subject of the Improvement in the Harbor of Mobile and the Riv
ers of Alabama :
S. A. M. WOOD, Chairman, Tuscaloosa.
DAVID CLOPTON, Montgomery.
A. O. LANE, Birmingham.
N. H. R. DAWSON, Selma.
J. T. HARRISON, Columbus, Miss.
REUBEN CHAPMAN, Livingston.
WM. H. DENSON, Gadsden.
R. O. PICKETT, Florence.
T. A. HAMILTON, Mobile.
47
We further recommend that this Convention resolve itself into
a permanent organization, to be known as "The Alabama Rivers
and Harbor Improvement Association."
That the officers of this Convention shall be the officers of this
Association until their successors are elected, and a Treasurer to
be selected by the Executive Committee whenever they see
proper.
That the Executive Committee shall consist of two from each
Congressional District and for the current year as follows:
FIRST DISTRICT.
John C. Webb, Thos. A. Hamilton.
SECOND DISTRICT.
M. L. Moses, Joel D. Murphree.
THIRD DISTRICT.
James B. Mitchell, C. H. Laney.
FOURTH DISTRICT.
Richard C. Jones, Chas. E. Waller.
FIFTH DISTRICT.
Thos. Williams, J. N. Suttle.
SIXTH DISTRICT.
A. C. Hargrove, L. M. Stone.
COLUMBUS, MISS.
David P. Blair.
SEVENTH DISTRICT.
W. B. Fagan, F. W. Bowden.
EIGHTH DISTRICT.
A. H. Moses, J. D. Weeden.
The President of the Association to be ex-officio Chairman.
48
The Executive Committee shall have power to call the Associa-
tion together at such times and places as they may deem neces-
sary. Fill all vacancies in its membership, and have power to do
all such things as may be proper to further the objects of this As-
sociation.
Report was adopted.
A telegram from Congressman ALLEN, of Mississippi, authoriz-
ing the Columbus delegation to pledge his cordial support to
whatever will promote the interests of his constituents, was read
to the Convention :
JACKSON, MISS., Nov. 16, 1885.
To W. M. Snell and Others-I expected to join your Committee
and go to Tuscaloosa, but am detained here by business in Court.
I regret it much; pledge my cordial support to whatever will pro-
mote your interest.
JNO. M. ALLEN.
Gen. S. A. M. Wood, Chairman, made the following report from
the Committee on Water-ways, which was amended by adding a
note introduced by Mr. Tanner, of Etowah, and adopted as
follows:
Alabama enjoys two great systems of water-ways--the Tennes-
see, which connects North Alabama with the Mississippi, and that
group of rivers which, draining much the largest part of Alabama,
with considerable portions of Georgia and Mississippi also, and
finding a common outlet into the Gulf through the waters of Mo-
bile Bay, may appropriately be called the Alabama system.
The Tennessee improvement, commenced over fifty years ago,
was taken actively in hand by Government in 1868, and has been
in progress ever since. Up to this time there has been appro-
priated for the river below Chattanooga $2,695,500. The estimate
for the amount needed for the entire improvement, as planned in
1877, was $4,133,000. This leaves, as needed for the completion
of the project, $1,437,500. Of this amount Major King estimated,
49
in his report for 1884, that $550,000 can be advantageously ex-
pended during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1886. The advan-
tages of and commercial necessity for this improvement were fully
set forth by the Convention held for this purpose at Chattanooga
two years ago, and your Committee, concurring in the action there
held, recommend that our delegates in Congress be requested to
urge the speedy completion of that work, so that the country
may begin to reap some returns from the large sums already
expended, and your Committee would also suggest that the
quickest returns can be had by completing the small improve-
ments below Florence, while the larger work of the Muscle Ca-
nal is in progress.
The Alabama system is composed of eleven rivers, which, if
improved, would, together, afford 2,000 miles of navigable waters.
These rivers, with their lengths, are as follows:
Mobile River.
Tombigbee
•
Old Town Creek..
Noxubee
Sipsey..
•
Black Warrior...
Alabama.
Coosa....
•
Ooustanaula.
Tallapoosa.
Cahawba.
•
Total....
50 miles.
550
75
SO
185
(6
232
390
315
66
108
(6
61
66
111
66
· 2,009
เ
Of the above rivers, before improvements were commenced,
there was navigable, at all seasons, a length of about 300 miles;
navigable, during the rainy season, 1,190 miles; not navigable at
all, 819 miles.
When the proposed improvements shall have been completed,
the length of low-water navigation will have been increased to
1,720 miles, and the remaining 289 miles will be navigable during
the Winter stage of water.
The area drained by this water-way system is over 40,000
square miles in extent, and it is inhabited by more than 1,000,000
people. These people are engaged mainly in agriculture, but
50
quite extensively also in manufacturing and mining. The pro--
ducts of each of these industries are designed mainly for distant
markets, and from these markets come the bulk of the supplies.
consumed. Even the food for man and beast comes largely from
abroad. Hence this region is specially interested in the cost of
transportation, and the margin of profit arising from these indus-
tries will depend very much upon the transportation charges.
The difference between high charges and low charges may make-
all the difference between a losing and a remunerative business.
Now the cheapest inland transportation route possible is a
navigable river, and thus, on general principles alone, it is evident
why the Alabama system of water-ways should be made fully
navigable.
But there is another very plain business reason evident in this
case. The Government has spent over $1,250,000 in deepening
Mobile Harbor, and must probably spend as much more in order
to secure the depth desired. Now that the fullest results may be
obtained from these expenditures, or, in other words, that the
greatest possible dividend may be derived from the investment,
the waters emptying into Mobile Bay should be made capable of
carrying to it the products of the fields and forests and mines.
and mills that be along their banks.
The improvement of these streams comes out as a corollary to
the improvement of Mobile Harbor. And, on the other hand, if
these rivers are improved, the money so expended will give very
inadequate results, unless a deep and capacious harbor lies ready
to accommodate the business brought to it.
Mobile Harbor and the rivers flowing into it taken together
form an important system of water-ways, and it is only by taking
them together that this importance is fully brought out. The
partial improvements of various portions of this system up to
this time have been heretofore urged and undertaken as isolated
necessaries.
Their connection with each other, their interdependence, has
not been made prominent, if considered at all, consequently
they have dragged along under inadequate and intermittent ap-
propriations, taking their chances with mill creeks, bayous and
similar streams, whose claims for improvement were looked upon
as of merely local importance.
Now, by asking for the improvement of our rivers on the
ground that they each are a part of one grand whole, we present
51
the case in a form that we have good precedent for supposing will
command the favorable consideration of Congress. Take the
Ohio River for example. This, with its tributaries, forms a trans-
portation route of great commercial value, and its tributaries,
because they are a part of that system and together, give it a
large part of its importance, have been liberally provided for.
Take the Little Kanawha for instance, and we cite that stream
because it is about the size of the Warrior below Tuscaloosa, and
of similar commercial importance. Its length is 130 miles, the
Warrior 140. Its business in 1883 was stated at $775,000, the
Warrior, for the same year, $850,000. Now the amount already
expended on the Little Kanawha by Government and private
corporations together is $369,300, and $55,000 is asked for to com-
plete the improvement making $424,300 in all.
Ten years ago we asked for $153,000 for the Warrior, and have
not yet had $100,000. The Great Kanawha, another tributary of
the Ohio, important mainly from its coal contribution, amount-
ing in 1883-84 to 650,000 tons, has received $1,738,000, and
$1,857,500 more will be needed to complete the improvement.
Upon the Monongahela has been spent $687,000, upon the
Alleghany $95,000, with $51,000 more needed; upon the Big
Sandy $204,000 spent and $92,000 more needed, upon a commerce
of $3,550,000, and so on.
Upon the Ohio itself the Government has spent over $5,000,000,
and has now commenced a system of lock and dam navigation,
estimated to cost nearly $40,000,000 to complete.
These examples might be greatly extended, but they are suffi-
cient to show that the streams uniting to form a great water-way
are liberally dealt with on that account. And the reason is plain :
The justification for the cost of improving a great river lies in
the volume of business done upon it, and this volume is made up
by aggregating the smaller amounts furnished by its tributaries.
If these are made more navigable, they supply more business to
the main stem, the expense of improving which is thus more.
fully justified. Greater returns are secured for the sums expended
on it. For the above reasons it seems to this Committee that this
Convention should present the deepening of Mobile Harbor and
the improvement of the rivers that empty into it as one system.
The expense of deepening the harbor would be a waste of money,
unless the business developed should be commensurate with this.
expense, and the greatest development is to be looked for from
52
the improvement of the rivers. The reverse of this principle is
also true. The expense of improving the Tombigbee, for instance,
finds its justification not only in the increased business of that
stream, but in the increase that it will contribute to the business
of Mobile Harbor, thus giving a larger return for the expense of
deepening it. And so of all the other rivers. By referring to
Major Damrell's report for 1884 it will be seen that the deepening
of Mobile Harbor was commenced in 1826, and continued at
intervals, with appropriations ranging from $10,000 to $50,000,
up to 1852, at which time a 10-foot channel had been obtained.
From 1870 to 1875 work was continued, and the channel deep-
ened to 13 feet. From 1881 to this time a 17-foot channel has
been in progress, and an actual minimum depth of 15 feet
secured. The total amount appropriated has been $1,268,997,
and $240,000 is estimated as needed to complete the 17-foot
channel.
་
The improvement of the rivers emptying into Mobile Bay
was commenced practically in 1875, and, under small appro-
priations, has been in progress ever since. The following table
shows the amount of appropriations up to this time, and the
estimated sums needed to complete the improvements proposed.
The figures are taken from the reports of the Chief of Engi-
neers:
Appropriated,
Required.
Tallapoosa.
Wetumpka to Tallassee...
Coosa, Rome to Greensport.
Cahawba..
Alabama...
$25,000
$15,125
418,700
133,647
Coosa, Greensport to Wetumpka.
•
2,649,949
30,000
165,000
130,000
99,741
Tombigbee...
167,362
75,000
Warrior, below Tuscaloosa..
•
97,638
53,465
Warrior, above Tuscaloosa.
50,000
1,150,000
Noxubee...
37,500
27,745
Sipsey.
145,000
Old Town Creek.
3,000
7,000
Totals.
.$959,200
$4,521,672
The improvement of the above named streams are intended
for facilitating and extending the ordinary commerce of the riv-
*
•
53
ན
ers.
Dividing the improvements intended mainly for coal traffic
from those for ordinary traffic, we have, for the latter, appro-
priated for 1,527 miles of river, $879,200; required, $411,722.
In order to show the necessity for the appropriations to meet
the requirements as above given, there should be an exhibit of
the existing business, and the results to be derived from the im-
provements. This can be done only approximately and imper-
fectly as to existing business, because the records kept by the
boards of trade in the river towns and at Mobile show little
beyond cotton receipts. In Major Damrell's report for 1883, how-
ever, appear itemized statements, compiled from the steamboat
books, showing the business for that year upon the Alabama, the
Tombigbee and the Warrior. In Chief of Engineer's report for
1879 will also be found an estimate of the business done upon
the upper Coosa. From these reports the value of the river com-
merce is shown to be:
For the upper Coosa.
For the Alabama..
For the Tombigbee.
For the Warrior..
Total...
$7,000,000
5,234,058
5,112,775
$53,775
$18,200,608
Now, recollecting that the improvements designed for facilitat-
ing and extending the above business will increase the length of
perennial navigation from 300 miles to 1,200 miles and will add
some 300 miles of Winter navigation, the urgency of making the
appropriation of $111,000 asked for to complete the improvement
will be readily inferred. Especially will the commercial necessity
of the case appear when considered in connection with the prom-
ised results. It must be remembered that the main business of
our river valleys is done by railroads, and that the freight
charges are dependent on competition. When the rivers are
in boating order freights are low, and vice versa.
The effects of the river improvements, when completed, will be
to make the rivers and railroads competing lines throughout the
year. The case is illustrated in the report on the Tombigbee for
1881. Referring to the Tombigbee and Mobile and Ohio Railroad,
the report says:
The average distance between the river and
railroad being about twenty or twenty-five miles, they are sub-
54
stantially competing lines, and whenever the river is navigable
for large boats a brisk competition ensues, and freight charges are
low. River improvements, then, that will have the effect to make
this competition continual, will effect the entire commerce of the
Tombigbee Valley, whether the actual transit is made by rail or
river. That is to say, the whole business of the Tombigbee
Valley with Mobile, amounting, in round numbers, to 270,000
bales of cotton, worth $13,500,000, with return freight probably
exceeding $9,000,000 in value, will be benefited by the improve-
ment.
((
During the past season (in 1879-80) the rates, with a full
stage of water in the river, were from 50 cents to $1.25 per bale.
When there was no river competition the rates by railroad were
$3.25 per bale. During the low-water season fully one-third of
the crop is sent to market at high rates; hence, with the river im-
proved so as to be navigable at all seasons, there might be ex-
pected a saving of at least $1.50 per bale on 90,000 bales, amount-
ing to $135,000, with reductions on up freight enough to raise
that amount to $150,000.
"This may be regarded as the minimum annual revenue to be
derived from the Tombigbee River improvement."
The above extract illustrates sufficiently well the principle upon
which the value of the proposed river improvements is to be esti-
mated, which is, that not only the volume of business, that is, or
will be actually transacted on the rivers, is to be considered, but
the whole amount that might be, for if shippers have the option.
of river transportation and prefer to use rail, it will be because
their ability to use the river will have given them river rates
by rail.
It might appear at first sight that the improvement of the
rivers by decreasing freight rates would prove detrimental to rail-
road interests. Such, however, would not probably be the ulti-
mate results. A decrease in transportation is a corresponding
increase in the profits of the producer. Increased profits give the
ability for increased consumption, and, again, induce increased
productions. The whole volume of business swells, so that while
the percentage of profit on railroad traffic would be diminished,
the amount of that traffic would be so much increased that the
net returns upon it would sooner or later be largely in excess of
those now received.
There remains now to be considered that portion of the Ala-
55
bama River improvements designed for the development of a
business that does not yet exist: the water carriage of coal and
iron. The four rivers, the Sipsey, Upper Warrior, Cahawba and
Lower Coosa, upon which these improvements are required, have
an aggregate length of 482 miles, and the works proposed will
cost, according to the estimates, $4,189,949, of which $80,000 have
been appropriated. The question is, will the developed business
be commensurate with the expense to be incurred? Now we have
already seen, in the case of the Great Kanawha, that a coal busi-
ness of 650,000 tons was done in 1883-84, that to develop that
business to this extent $1,738,000 had been expended, and that a
total expenditure of $3,595,000 was proposed. This would un-
doubtedly be a wise expenditure, even should the business be no
further increased, because the commercial importance of this
business depends, not upon the market value of the coal, but
mainly upon the fact that coal feeds the steam power, without
which manufacturing industries would, in many places, cease to
exist. The Alabama coal fields already have an output of more
than double the amount shipped down the Great Kanawha.
With cheap river transportation afforded, there appears no good.
reason why the Alabama collieries should not send down to Mo-
bile a yearly supply of coal, equal in amount to that sent down
the Ohio from Pittsburgh, say 6,000,000 tons. It all depends upon.
the cost of transportation. What will it cost to deliver coal in
Mobile by river? We will briefly consider this question with re-
gard to the Warrior River, selecting that stream as happening to
be more convenient for the purpose, and because the Coosa being
a larger stream with greater capacity for tows, and the Cahawba
being nearer to Mobile, giving shorter distance for carriage, the
results ascertained for the Warrior may be fairly inferred for the
others.
The main items that make up the total cost are, the cost of the
coal placed on the barges, the capacity of the tows, the time con-
sumed in a round trip, and the running expense of the same.
The cost of coal in Pennsylvania is given in the report of the
Secretary of Internal Affairs for 1882-83, as ranging from sixty-five
cents per ton as the average for twenty-six collieries in Cambria
County, to $1.09 for seventy-one collieries in Alleghany County.
The average for the State, comprising 381 collieries, with an out-
put of 18,730,000 tons, is placed at ninety-one cents. The average.
cost of mining alone was fifty-five cents per ton, but adding in the
56
?
cost of inside and outside laborers, mules, drivers, overseers, clerks,
superintendents, etc., made the cost as above stated.
Presuming that the cost of mining in Alabama should not be
greater than in Pennsylvania, we assume ninety-one cents ast
the cost of coal dumped on the barges at or near the rivers.
We
take the size of the tows at 215 feet by seventy-five feet, composed
of five barges and a towboat. This size, we are informed, owing to
the contracted width and sharp bends on the lower Warrior, is
probably as large as could be safely and conveniently handled on
that stream; and during the low-water season, say for four
months in the year, the tow might be reduced to three barges.
The capacity of the barges loaded five feet would be 315 tons, say,
as a safe estimate, three hundred tons. The high-water tow, run-
ning for eight months, would have a load of 1,500 tons, the low-
water tow, for four months nine hundred tons. The average load
for the year would be 1,300 tons. As the tows were ordinarily run
night and day, and make no intermediate landings, we assume
five miles an hour as a reasonable estimate for speed. This would
require seven to eight days for a round trip, allowing for deten-
tions from fogs and storms, we may take ten days, as the time
needed, which would give three trips a month, or an average of
3,900 tons per month for each towboat. The monthly expenses
of running a tow, assuming that the crew would consist of a mate,
two engineers, two strikers, two firemen, two pilots, a watchman,
a cook and four deck hands, with a consumption of 225 tons of
coal, $100 worth of provisions, and with 10 per cent. allowance for
incidentals, would amount to $1,232. This would make the cost
of towing about thirty-two cents a ton. Add to this the cost of
mining as above given and we have $1.23 as the cost of coal on
the barge in Mobile. To deliver this coal and to cover incidental
charges would increase the cost to probably $1.50. Should it reach
$1.75 it would still show a cost less than has yet been reached
in any of our sea-ports. We may then consider the question of
cost of transportations decided, and consequently the case for the
coal rivers made out.
If it is expedient to spend nearly $4,000,000 on the Great Kana-
wha, ninety-five miles long, for the coal business of that stream,
and we do not think the expediency has ever been questioned, it
will surely be a wise measure to use $4,000,000, if needed, in open-
ing the four coal streams of Alabama. With coal delivered in
Mobile, even at the high estimate of $1.75, she will be the cheap-
57
:
{
est coal port on the continent. Every steam vessel that navigates
the Gulf will come to Mobile for coal, or seek supplies at depots
furnished by her. All the Gulf ports of the United States and
Havana, Vera Cruz, Central America and the Isthmus will draw
their coal from the Alabama Rivers. These facts show that the
interests represented in this Convention are not local, nor confined
to a single State. The commercial interests of the Nation are con-
cerned, and just as the whole country is directly or indirectly af-
fected by the removal of Flood Rock in New York Harbor, so will
the deepening of Alabama's port, and the opening of her rivers, be
felt throughout the land.
We have now laid before this Convention real facts and figures
and comments, as we have been able to prepare in the limited
time at our disposal. We have touched lightly on the merits of
the separate improvements for localities whose interests are here
represented. We presume each delegation is prepared to urge
the claims of that particular improvement in which it is more es-
pecially interested.
But we would suggest that while these various interests should
be presented each in its strongest light, they should appear, not
as rival schemes, but as parts of one grand whole.
Should they conflict, their claims will tend to neutralize each
other, while acting harmoniously together they will give a weight
and momentum to the proceedings of this Convention that can
not fail to have a powerful effect.
Present Mobile Harbor and its feeders as one scheme to Con-
gress, and if it all can not be vigorously taken hold of at once, let
Congress select such portion of it as will yield the quickest and
best results, and push that through to completion. This fin-
ished will make still more urgent the necessity for completing
the whole, and Alabama will then have what she especially
needs, cheap transportation. We have cheap coal, cheap iron,
cheap timber, cheap land, cheap cotton and cheap living-all the
materials for building up prosperity but one-we lack cheap trans-
portation, the cement with which to put the building together.
NOTE-By Mr. TANNER, of Etowah.-Instead of stating that
$133,000 is required to complete the work from Rome, Georgia, to
Greensport, it should show that $133,000 is required to complete
the work from Rome to the bridge over the Coosa, on the Selma,
Rome & Dalton Railroad.
58
ว
The Committee also submitted the following, which was also
adopted:
Resolved, That this Convention heartily favors liberal appropri-
ations by Congress for the improvement of rivers and harbors in
all parts of the United States, and recommend to our Senators
and Representatives in Congress that they should act as a unit,
and urge upon Congress the importance of making appropriations.
adequate for the completion, within a reasonable time, of the im-
provements recommended by this Convention, with a view to the
speedy enjoyment by the people of the States and General Gov-
ernment of the advantages to be derived therefrom.
The following Committee was appointed to report a plan of
raising funds to have five thousand copies of the Proceedings of
this Convention printed:
M. L. Stansel, M. Lyon, H. H. Brown, J, L. Tanner, T. H.
Watts, Jr.
The following resolution, offered by Mr. LYON, of Mobile, was
adopted:
Resolved, That the Executive Committee of the Harbor and
River Improvement Association consider the advisability of ar-
ranging for membership throughout the State, and fixing dues for
said membership, to meet necessary expenses for the purpose of
carrying on the work of the Association.
Mr. WOLFE, of Pensacola, offered a resolution with regard to
improvements by the Government at Pensacola, such as restoring
the navy yard, repairing forts, building land batteries, etc., which
was referred to the Committee on Harbors.
Captain W. H. GARDNER, of Mobile, from the Committee on
Agricultural Resources, made a report, which was adopted:
Your Committee beg to submit the following:
To agriculture belongs the credit of having first awakened
human energy to the duty of providing, during nature's pro-
ductive seasons, for their wants and necessities in non-productive
59
A
perials, an since the early historic periods, the power, great-
ness and material prosperity which Nations have achieved have,
as a rule, borne an exact relation to the diligence with which
they have cultivated the soil, or the judgment with which they
have selected their grazing grounds.
The Egyptians, Assyrians and ancient Jews were essentially an
agricultural people. So were the teeming multitudes of India,
and, later on, the vast hordes of Central Asia, who, under the
leadership of Genghis Kahn and Tamerlane, overran and con-
quered more than half of Asia and two-thirds of Europe, were
drawn from the grain fields and cattle pastures.
The foundations of Roman greatness were securely established
when the dominant industry of her people was agriculture; and,
in the ripe maturity of her power, the immortal Cato penned a
treatise on the subject, in the course of which occurs the follow-
ing practical truth: "A good husbandman should be a seller, not
a buyer." He also advises the selection of forms with reference
to the ease with which their produce could be marketed.
Zenophon extols agriculture and credits the great Cyrus with
the declaration that the first duty of the State was to foster and
protect agriculture, as all human life was sustained directly by the
products of the soil, and without prosperity in that department
of industry, loss and retrogression inevitably followed in all
others, thus involving the State in ultimate ruin. The sound-
ness of the opinion is demonstrated by the history and present
condition of those people who have persistently neglected their
garden and farming interests.
Our inquiry, however, is restricted to the agricultural resources
of the drainage basin of the waters seeking the ocean through
Mobile Bay, and to that subject we will confine our investi-
gations.
The only satisfactory basis for a detailed statement of the crops
and values produced in the area mentioned is the census reports,
but as production has materially increased since 1879, we have
made such additions in certain counties as are warranted by
their improved condition and increased acreage under cultivation.
The total cotton area of Alabama in 1879 was 2,330,086 acres.
According to the National Cotton Exchange, the present acre-
age is 2,752, while the Agricultural Bureau places it as high as
2,823, the average of the two showing nearly twenty per cent.
increase, which corresponds to the increase in the district under
consideration.
5
60
The acreage of corn and oats shows a relatively larger per-
centage of increase than that of cotton. Our estimates are
therefore based on an increase of fifteen per cent. for cotton,
twenty per cent. for corn, and twenty-five per cent. for oats,
the production of the latter having very largely increased under
more rational farming methods.
The drainage area of the Bigbee River comprises eight coun-
ties of Alabama, thirteen and about half of two others in Mis-
sissippi; that of the Warrior six, and of the Cahawba three in
Alabama. The Alabama, Coosa and their tributaries drain
twenty and half of two others in Alabama, while the confluents
and tributaries of the first two gather the waters of eleven counties
of Georgia, and pour them into the great river of the State.
As the details by counties would be cumbersome, we group
them by districts, and present them in that condensed form in
the order above indicated:
Corn, Bush.
Oats, Bush. Wheat, Bush. Cotton, Bales.
Bigbee, Ala..
3,880,926
369,692
51,894
115,000
Bigbee, Miss..
7,080,685
731,228
76,100
194,000
Total Bigbee…...
10,961,611
1,100,920
127,994
309,000
Warrior...
2,744,000
277,455
311,319
56,200
Cahawba..
1,411,430
155,900
55,000
38,850
Alabama and Coosa, Ala. 9,770,000 1,528,466
805,716
315,900
Coosa, Ga...
3,821,400
597,458
735,418
70,100
Total Alabama and
Coosa.
13,591,400 2,125,924 1,541,134
386,000
Grand total....
28,708,441 3,660,199 2,035,447
790,050
The annual production of cotton seed exceeds 27,000,000 bush-
els, which, after reserving 6,000,000 bushels for planting, leaves
21,000,000 bushels for conversion into oil, oil cake, meal, or for
61
fertilizing purposes, worth on the plantation more than $2,000,-
000. Since 1879 the tendency has been to seek a more self-sus-
taining basis, and, as a necessity, more attention has been given.
to gardens, truck patches and mixed crops. Hence we feel war-
ranted in the statement that the present annual production in
the area under discussion exceeds 800,000 bushels of Irish pota-
toes and 5,000,000 bushels of sweet potatoes, while that of hay
has so enormously increased that your Committee hesitate to
name the figures representing its present yield.
During the same period fruit and grape culture have developed
important proportions, notably in Cullman, Chilton, Shelby, Mont-
gomery, Chambers and Lee. The famous Parnell peach orchard,
in Chambers County, alone comprises over 1,000 acres, being one
of the largest in the United States.
The annual supply of hogs is fully 1,500,000; of milk cows and
cattle, 850,000; and of sheep, 400,000.
It is an economic law that improves transportation facilities,
stimulates enterprise, thereby increasing production and the
value of lands. No industry is more quickly responsive to such
influences than those of the farm, the garden and dairy; hence,
with such facilities as will give the great mineral belt of Alabama
easy access to the markets of the world, by cheap transportation,
the energies of our people will be awakened to more vigorous and
practical efforts, and the volume of agricultural values show a
corresponding increase. The forests of Alabama and North-east
Mississippi are as rich in the elements of material wealth as are
the soils, and only less so than the mines. On all the rivers flow-
ing into Mobile Bay are vast quantities of cypress, yellow pine,
hickory, poplar, white oak, red gum and ash, while walnut and
maple are found in considerable quantities.
No section of our great country is better adapted to the econ-
omical manufacture of furniture, wagons, agricultural imple-
ments, chairs and woodenware; and with deep water in Mobile Bay,
and the free navigation of the Bigbee, Sipsey, Warrior, Cahawba
and Coosa, Alabama enterprise and Alabama capital will rapidly
transform millions of forest trees into forms of beauty and util-
ity, thus opening up a new source of wealth which will give em-
ployment to many now seeking it and add millions to the taxa-
ble values of the State.
On page 14, Volume IV, of the Report of the Senate Commis-
sion of Education and Labor, may be found the sworn testimony
62
of Mr. Robert G. Kyle, of Gadsden, Alabama, who states that a
mill then operated by him (November, 1883), was shipping yellow
pine lumber to Ohio, for use in the manufacture of railroad cars.
Alabama pine will bear a greater vertical strain across the line
of its grain without permanent deflection, or bending, than oak,
poplar, or white pine. It weighs 41 pounds per cubic foot,
against 55 pounds for oak, thus it was shipped by rail 650 miles
at a rate of freight 333 per cent. more than its cost at the mill,
because of its superior merits. Why, then, with cheap coal, the
cheapest iron and best timber in the United States, should not
Alabama add the extensive manufacture of freight and passenger
cars to her numerous other sources of wealth? She but needs
cheap water transportation, for the easy concentration and de-
livery of her many elements of wealth at favorable localities, to
speedily realize the most sanguine anticipations indulged by her
friends.
What we all desire is the improvement of the water-ways of
our State to their highest navigable point, and what we should
do here is to organize and continue such vigorous and persistent
efforts as will accomplish that result.
Other communities similarly situated do not limit their efforts
to finely-drawn resolutions, elaborately-prepared speeches, or
carefully-digested essays, but they send a well-informed delegation
to Washington to lay facts and figures before the proper commit-
tees, and to urge favorable action thereon. Five million dollars,
judiciously expended, will give us 23 feet of water from Mobile
to the Gulf, the navigation of the Bigbee, Sipsey, Warrior, Ca-
hawba and Coosa to their highest navigable points, and that sum
is but a fraction of the amounts expended on needed improve-
ments to the north and west of us.
It is no part of our policy to decry the merits of other enter-
prises seeking National aid. We of Alabama are National in
our sympathies and convictions; we feel ourselves an integral
part of a great Nation, whose vast resources need development,
and each successful effort in that direction but strengthens our
common country to compete in the markets of the world for a fair
share of their trade. We antagonize no American industry, nor
seek to impair the profits of any, but we present a plan whose
successful prosecution will redound to the advantage of American
commerce, as it will develop new industries, vitalize inert
forces, increase the volume of our exports, aid materially in the
7.
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1.
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​2.
adjustment of trade balances, and assist beyond measure in the
acquisition of Central and South American trade.
These are the new fields which American enterprise must seek
as a market for her coal, lumber, provisions, flour and surplus.
manufactured articles; and no practicable scheme now before the
country will conduce more largely thereto than cheap and easy
transportation from the coal fields and furnaces, the workshops,
forests and farms of Alabama, North-east Mississippi and North-
west Georgia, to tide water, by the judicious improvement of our
splendid system of natural water-ways.
W. H. GARDNER, Chairman.
Mr. A. H. MOSES, of Sheffield, offered the following resolution,
and it was adopted:
Resolved, That our Senators and Representatives in Congress
are requested to make an earnest and united effort to provide for
the expenditure of a sufficient pårt of such appropriation as may
be needed for the improvement of the Tennessee River, in Ala-
bama, for the prompt improvement of the Colbert Shoals, below
Florence.
Mr. SKAGGS, from Special Committee on the Eads Ship Railway,
made a report, which was, after discussion, laid on the table.
Adjourned to 7 o'clock this evening.
'7
EVENING SESSION.
Mr. STANSEL, from Committee on Finance, made a report, sug-
gesting that each member of this Convention be requested to
pay one dollar for the purpose of defraying the expenses of print-
ing the Proceedings of the Convention, and that W. C. JEMISON
be made treasurer of this fund.
The report was adopted, and the members present responded
promptly with their dollars.
64
Mr. WATTS moved that the Treasurer mail to each of the dele-
gates to this Convention six copies of the Proceedings, when the
same shall have been printed. Carried.
Mr. HAMILTON, from the Committee on Harbors, to which was
referred the resolution of Mr. Wolfe as to the Pensacola navy
yard, reported that, while not denying the importance of the
measures suggested in the resolution in question, it seems that
these matters are not within the objects for which this Conven-
tion was called, and therefore recommend that no action be taken
in the premises.
General WOOD, from the Local Committee on Correspondence,
announced that he had in his possession a number of letters from
members of Congress and other distinguished gentlemen invited
to the Convention, and who were unable to attend. The follow-
ing are letters from Congressmen WHEELER and OATES (which
were read), and from Colonel JOHN T. MILNER and Colonel
JAMES B. EADS:
General S. A. M. Wood:
WHEELER, ALABAMA, November 4, 1885.
MY DEAR GENERAL-I regret very much my inability to be at
the Convention at Tuscaloosa, to which I was so kindly invited.
I am fully alive to the importance of liberal appropriations for
Alabama rivers flowing into the Gulf, and it will give me great
pleasure to do all in my power to assist the delegation in their
efforts to procure the largest appropriations which can be intelli-
gently used, for the improvement of those rivers.
With very high regard, truly your friend,
Jos. WHEELER.
ABBEVILLE, ALABAMA, November 13, 1885.
General S. A. M. Wood, Secretary; H. B. Foster and F. R. Maxwell,
Assistant Corresponding Secretaries:
GENTLEMEN-Your esteemed favor of the 29th ult., inviting me
to be present at the meeting to be held in Tuscaloosa, on the 17th
inst., touching the improvement of our rivers and harbors, was
duly received. I deferred answering until now, hoping that I
65
could be present; but sickness in my family will prevent me
from attending. I assure you, however, and through you the
Convention, that I am keenly alive to the importance of the
improvements, which I am informed the Convention is called to
consider, and will go as far as any reasonable man can in their
advocacy; and I will work as hard in the next Congress as any
Representative from Alabama to obtain the largest possible appro-
priations for the necessary improvement of all our navigable
rivers and the Harbor of Mobile.
The completion of the work at Muscle Shoals, the removal of
obstructions and opening to navigation of the Black Warrior
from the great stratas of iron ore and exhaustless coal fields to
Mobile and the Gulf of Mexico, and the Coosa, so that navigation
be made reliable and easy between Rome, Georgia, and Mobile, as
the most auspicious of coming events in the future of Alabama.
These will inaugurate a new prosperity, the limitless possibilities
of which can scarcely be conjectured.
As a citizen, and as a Representative, it will ever be my pride
and pleasure to contribute in whatever way I can, though it be
but little, to the prosperity and glory of my native State.
Again assuring you of my regrets that I can not be at the Con-
vention, I am,
Very respectfully,
A
WM. C. OATES.
NEWCASTLE, ALA., November 12, 1885.
Hon. W. C. Jemison, Chairman, and Mayor of Tuscaloosa:
MY DEAR SIR-Your very kind invitation to me to be present
at the River and Harbor Convention, that will meet in Tus-
caloosa on the 17th inst., is before me. I regret my inability
to attend. My recent accident has practically unfitted me for
business; besides, I am subpoenaed in an important case at
Greenville, Ala., as a witness for the 16th. I am a railroad man,
and all my instincts and ideas run in that current.
I look upon the Tuscaloosa Gonvention, however, as simply
another step in the march of events. Great ideas like those
contemplated in the call of this Convention-to-wit, the utiliz-
ing at Mobile of the mineral wealth of Alabama-develop slowly.
My judgment was that a great railway, passing through our
State by your city to Mobile, would accomplish the object.
Upon the very heels of this proposition comes the call for this
66
River and Harbor Convention, looking, as far as we as Ala-
bamians are concerned, to the same end as the railway project
above referred to.
I may not live to see the full and complete consummation
of this great proposition, but IT WILL NEVER DIE OUT NOW.
The railway proposition looking to this end has already re-
ceived the full sanction and hearty indorsement of the law-
makers of Alabama. You propose now, by and through the
instrumentality of this Convention, to enlist the power of our
National Government in this great undertaking. If the Mobile
and Ohio Railroad had been built through Tuscaloosa and the
Alabama coal fields, Mobile would now, if not the largest, be
the most prosperous city on the Gulf of Mexico, and along the
line of the road would have been a series of industrial devel-
opments unsurpassed anywhere in our country. The men who
projected and built this great railroad knew and considered
nothing but cotton.
The events of over a third of a century come marching along,
and we discover the fact that coal and iron must play an import-
ant part in the commerce of Alabama. Your Convention may
come and go, and another, and another may meet, but the idea is
there, and will never die out. It will take time and money, mill-
ions of dollars, to lock and dam properly the Warrior River.
But the arguments and resources are so many as to why it should
be done by the Government that I look for an early beginning of
this great work in a scale commensurate with its importance.
Yours truly,
JOHN T. MILNER.
NEW ORLEANS, November 13, 1885.
Hon. W. C. Jemison, Mayor of Tuscaloosa:
MY DEAR SIR-I am just in receipt of your esteemed favor of
November 6th, which has reached me by the roundabout way of
New York, and in which I am invited by the citizens of Tusca-
loosa to attend the River and Harbor Convention, to be held in
that city on the 17th inst.
I feel a deep interest in the subject which the Convention has
been called to consider, and would be much pleased if it were.
practicable for me to be present.
A large meeting will be held in this city by its representative
men, for the purpose of urging upon Congress the favorable con-
67
sideration and encouragement of the Tehuantepec Ship Railway.
This meeting will also occur on the 17th inst., and I have prom-
ised to be present at it.
The construction of the ship railway is really a part of the
grand system of improvements which Alabama requires to enable
her wonderful deposits of iron and coal to be utilized by the
whole world. The improvement of the river to Mobile, and the
improvement of Mobile Harbor, would give the people of Ala-
bama access to all of the markets lying to the east of Mobile,
through the Florida Straits. The Ship Railway at Tehuantepec,
only eight or nine hundred miles distant from Mobile, would
open up all the Pacific markets for her products, and enable her
to successfully compete with the English in supplying coal to the
western coast of South America, and would, at the same time,
give her a short and direct route for her cotton fabrics, iron and
other manufactures to the entire Orient, in which she would be
able to compete successfully with Great Britain and all European
competitors.
The Tehuantepec Ship Railway has already been endorsed by
a number of commercial and legislative bodies, but quite recently
by the representative men of St. Louis, and I trust the Conven-
tion at Tuscaloosa will deem it to the interests of the State of
Alabama to give it an equally favorable indorsement.
I shall telegraph, this evening, to the Chief Engineer of the
Ship Railway, Mr. E. L. Corthell, now in New York, and request
him to attend the Convention at Tuscaloosa in my place, to speak
for the ship railway, as he is quite familiar with the river and
harbor improvements desired by your State, and can show the
important connection of the ship railway with them.
Please convey to the Committee and citizens of Tuscaloosa my
sincere thanks for the honor they have conferred upon me, and
accept my acknowledgments for yourself, with the assurance that
anything which lays in my power to do, in the way of furthering
the improvements of the rivers and harbors of Alabama, will be
most cheerfully contributed. Very truly yours.
JAS. B. EADS. "
Mr. STANSEL offered the following resolution, which was
adopted:
Resolved, That the following named gentlemen be, and they are
hereby appointed, a Committee on Publication, whose duty it
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
3 9015 02310 9617
68
shall be to supervise the printing of the Proceedings of this Con-
vention, with authority to make such revision or abatement of
the same as they may deem proper, viz.: H. H. BROWN, S. A. M.
WOOD, and W. C. JEMISON.
Mr. RUTLEDGE offered the following resolution :
Resolved, That the Committee having in charge the publication
of the Proceedings of this Convention have prepared, if found
practicable, a map of the State of Alabama, showing the mineral,
timber and agricultural districts, respectively, the rivers and
railway systems, and chief cities of the State. Adopted.
Mr. WILEY offered the following, and it was adopted:
Resolved, That the thanks of the Convention are due, and
hereby tendered, to the people of Tuscaloosa for their hospitali-
ties and courtesies; to the President and Secretaries of the Con-
vention for the able and impartial manner in which they have
discharged their duties; the local Committee of Arrangements;
the railroads for reduced rates of transportation to delegates, and
to Masters Henry Snow and Archie Leland for their prompt and
polite attention as pages.
General WOOD introduced the following resolution:
Resolved,
That we further tender our thanks to the able press
of Alabama and adjoining States, who have so ably and gener-
ously seconded the suggestion of the call of this Convention, made
and supported in so capable a manner by the Daily Age, of Bir-
mingham. Adopted.
During the day and night sessions able, eloquent and instruc-
tive speeches were made by Governor O'NEAL, Congressmen JONES
and MARTIN. Hon. THOS. WILLIANS and Major W. W. SCREWS.
"
A motion was made and carried to adjourn sine die, and upon
announcing the result of that vote President ToULMIN made a
brief but elegant and beautiful speech, congratulating the Con-
vention upon its efficient work, and the prospects of grand results
flowing from the same.

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