"It is within my knowledge that twenty years ago there were annually carried by steamboats from Memphis to New Orleans over 100,000 bales of cotton, and that in almost every year since the railroads between Memphis and New Orleans passed under one management, not a single bale has been carried down the Mississippi River from Memphis by boat, and in no one year have 500 bales been thus carried; the reason being that, including the charges for marine and fire insurance, the rates by water are higher than by rail." To this statement Mr Fish added some figures which may be tabulated as follows:-- TONNAGE OF FREIGHT RECEIVED AT OR DESPATCHED FROM NEW ORLEANS. +----------------------------------------+-------------+-------------+ | | 1890 | 1900 | +----------------------------------------+-------------+-------------+ | By the Mississippi River (all sources) | 2,306,290 | 450,498 | | By rail | 3,557,742 | 6,852,064 | +----------------------------------------+-------------+-------------+ Decline of river traffic in ten years 1,855,792 tons Increase of rail " " " 3,294,322 " These figures bear striking testimony to the results that may be brought about in a country where railways are allowed a fair chance of competing with even the greatest of natural waterways--a chance, as I have said, denied them in Germany and France. Looking, too, at these figures, I understand better the significance of what I saw at Memphis, where a solitary Mississippi steamboat--one of the survivals of those huge floating warehouses now mostly rusting out their existence at New Orleans--was having her cargo discharged on the river banks by a few negroes, while the powerful locomotives of the Illinois Central were rushing along on the adjoining railway with the biggest train-loads it was possible for them to haul. On the general position in the United States I might quote the following from a communication with which I have been favoured by Mr Luis Jackson, an Englishman by birth, who, after an early training on British railways, went to the United States, created there the rôle of "industrial commissioner" in connection with American railways, and now fills that position on the Erie Railroad:--