What I have termed the “American type” of ports are those that have piers built on piles out from the shore line. Alongside these piers the ships are tied up, and largely with their own derricks they hoist their cargoes from their holds and deposit them on the pier. Sometimes these piers are two stories high, with one floor intended for incoming and the other for outgoing freight. These piers may be from a few hundred to a thousand or more feet in length, and the longer they are the broader they must be in order that there may be enough space between the freight on both sides for the trucks that cart the freight to or from them, for the longer the pier the more freight it will have and the more trucks it will need to accommodate in order to have it moved. But piers are not the best arrangement for handling freight. A more nearly ideal arrangement is a warehouse served on one side by ships and on the other by a railroad and trucks. In this case the warehouse becomes a reservoir capable of taking quickly into storage the huge cargoes of many ships. From this reservoir of imports freight trains can be loaded conveniently without congestion. On the other hand, exports sent to the warehouse by rail can arrive in trainload or carload or even less-than-carload shipments and can be stored conveniently until a cargo is on hand, when it can quickly be put aboard ship. In such a port as New York such a warehouse would need, as well, to be equipped to load and unload lighters and canal boats. Were all of the piers of the port of New York rebuilt along these lines—and that is practically impossible—the port could handle with ease and the minimum of expense many times its present tonnage. [Illustration: A NEW YORK HARBOUR FERRY _While these double-ended ships are large, they do not compare in size with the liners. Yet they carry hundreds of thousands of passengers to and fro across the Hudson and the Upper Bay._ ] What I have called the “European type” of port is one in which piers, such as those in New York, are practically unknown. Many European ports have a handicap that does not trouble ports of the United States. This handicap is the high tide. While the tide at New York has a range of 4½ feet, at Boston 9½ feet, at Baltimore 1 foot, Liverpool is troubled with a range of 25 or 30 feet, and many other ports have as much, or almost as much. This means that while a ship may be tied up to a pier at New York and not be bothered by an extreme movement up and down great enough to make her any difficulty in the handling of her cargo, ships in Liverpool cannot be berthed at unprotected piers, for if they were they would find their decks far below the deck of the pier at low tide, while at high tide the water would raise them until their decks would be above it.