During the last quarter of a century the commerce of the Great Lakes—the United States commerce especially—has grown with a rapidity almost exceeding belief. It has become enormous! At the present time it is stated on competent authority that the steam tonnage of these inland seas largely exceeds the combined tonnage of this character in all other parts of the United States put together. Not to speak of the vast amount of shipping employed in the iron, the coal, and the lumber trade, the Lake Superior grain and flour shipments for 1896 were 121,750,000 bushels. The Lake Michigan grain and flour shipments for the same year were 273,820,000 bushels, together making 395,570,000 bushels of grain and flour shipped in one year from these two quarters! It is difficult to realize the magnitude of such a statement. Mr. Keep, already quoted, in his report for 1890 puts it strikingly when he says: “If the freight carried on the Great Lakes in the United States coastwise and foreign trade during the year 1890 were loaded into railway cars of average size and capacity, the cars so loaded would cover 13,466 miles of railroad track.” The Commissioners appointed by the Canadian Government to meet with a similar Committee appointed by the United States Government to consider the subject of international and deeper waterways, preface their report by alluding to the commerce of the Great Lakes in these terms: “It is impossible to convey, within reasonable space, an adequate idea of the extraordinary[49] development of inland water transportation on the Upper Lakes—which for rapidity, extent, economy and efficiency has no counterpart even on the ocean. More than half of the best steamships of the United States are imprisoned above Niagara Falls, and more than half of the tonnage built in the United States in 1896 was launched upon the lakes.” This inland water commerce has built up twelve cities on the southern shores above Niagara, five of which have over 200,000 population, and one of them over a million. Within these limits there are twenty-seven dry docks, the largest of which is on Lake Superior and is 560 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 18 feet depth of water. There are sixty-three life-saving stations upon these lakes, ten of which are Canadian. “Unusual prosperity has stimulated ship-building to such an extent that there are now in course of construction at the various lake shipyards, sixty-five vessels, thirty of which are steel freight steamers which will average 400 feet in length and 4,000 tons capacity—costing in all $9,000,000.”[50]