WE CHAPTER VIII CANALS AND PORTS E have just been considering, in port development, the enormous importance of the railway companies. In the national economy a port is, of course, not to be viewed as a separate entity, but as a point of traffic junction, a point of divergence and convergence where sea-carriage and land-carriage join handsa cargo conduit-pipe, in fact. And the pipe must be kept fully open, both for the arrival and departure of sea-borne goods on the sea side, and for the clearance or despatch and reception of goods land-carried. The quays, docks, and river must be always clear and unimpeded on the one side, the roads and railway-lines on the other. But of late years we have entered on new and unforeseen conditions, and these conditions are becoming more and more important and accentuated. I refer to the huge-nay, the stupendous-bulk of cargo which a single ship can bring. The subject has already been referred to on p. 109. We know that 1,000 tons of cargo equals 125 railwaytruck loads, or about five goods-train loads; and, while from 10,000 to 20,000 tons of cargo can be put out of a single vessel, three or four vessels, each carrying from 5,000 to 10,000 tons, may easily arrive together. It is not, indeed, merely that this or that vessel is specially big, but that tonnage generally is on a scale of steady increase. The figures on p. 66 are evidence of the fact. The difficulty of the day is to give shore clearance to the cargoes that are shot pell-mell into our ports; for our roads and our railways have nothing like kept pace in their development with the everincreasing capacity of the ships. I have a strong belief that in London, at any rate, the roads to the docks need great improvement. On this point the Royal Commissioners took little or no evidence, and their report makes practically no reference to it. The railway problem they also left practically untouched. They kept, in fact, to the defects of the port as such to the river, the docks, and the quays and sheds, and behind these latter they did not go. And, indeed, within the limitations of their refer ence there was work for them enough and to spare. But what we may call the inland clearance question is a problem of great and increasing importance certainly for London, and more or less for other ports. We read of lines blocked and of deficiency of trucks in England and Scotland, in America and France; of ships detained because they cannot get their cargoes carried away; and of quays blocked with goods awaiting removal. Also of the difficulty of 'bunkering' steamships for want of railway access to the docks. In America they are building bigger trucks and more powerful engines. We read of trucks to carry 40 or 50 tons instead of 8 or 10 tons, and giant engines upstanding to a height of 14 feet, or even 16 feet. But all this is in a distracted attempt to come level to the needs only as they are, while all the time these needs themselves are growing. Goods and produce are, in fact, more and more frequently poured into the land-transit ports beyond the capacity of the railways to remove them. The condition is not yet chronic, but in trade, as in other matters, the pendulum swings between ease and pressure, between fast and feast, and the dock authorities know it well. And in the times of pressure the railways are overtaken by the calls upon their rolling stock and sidings. It will probably be no great while before the possibilities of inland water conveyance again force themselves on the public attention. In Germany, in Holland, and in Belgium the use and value of such conveyance receive the fullest encouragement and recognition. In France, where very large sums have been spent on the rivers and canals, further very large outlays are in contemplation. The great prosperity of Hull, where about four-fifths of the importations leave the North-Eastern Railway Company's docks in keels or barges, is largely due to the water-roads, both local and to the Northern and Midland towns. In an interesting and instructive article on 'The Internal Navigation of France,' by M. Pierre Baudin, ex-Minister of Public Works, in the Contemporary Review for last June, occurs the following passage: Since the tonnage of ships at Marseilles has only increased by 121 per cent. between 1870 and 1899, and at Bordeaux similar progress has only been made at the rate of 89 per cent., whilst at Rotterdam it was 526 per cent., at Hamburg 445 per cent., at Antwerp 400 per cent. during the same period, the fact of the inferiority of the French ports must be attributed to their not having the support, like their rivals, of a system of waterways radiating from the coasts into the interior.' The well-informed writer points out how in Germany, etc., not merely rough and low-valued stuff—in England, ordinarily, lime and bricks and city refuse-but raw materials for the manufactories, and finished goods from these back to the shipping ports, form a highly important part of the water traffic. The railways and the waterways being largely the property of the State, the two methods of transit work hand in hand, greatly to the national advantage. A good understanding between the railways and the waterways is of course indispensable, and in this respect we in England are under a great disadvantage. The French writer insists on the necessity for frequent points of contact between the two systems. Such connections are, he points out, with comments unfavourable to his own country, one in sixty-six miles on the Rhone, one in eighty miles on the Garonne, and one in 114 miles on the Saône, and in other cases no connection at all. In Germany, on the contrary, there are points of contact on the great rivers at distances of twenty-three miles.' The construction of canals is, no doubt, an expensive business, but so far as |