To handle her Lake freight at the present time, Buffalo has twenty-four elevators with a total storage capacity of twenty-two million bushels, and a daily elevating capacity of six million bushels; nine ore docks; five coal trestles with a daily loading capacity of twenty-two thousand tons--and with these might be included three railroad storage-yards with an aggregate capacity of four hundred thousand tons. Thirteen lines of steamships, not including the many companies represented by the big freighters, ply the Lakes from Buffalo; and the fifteen trunk lines centring in the city provide two hundred and fifty-three passenger trains a day. With all of this vast machinery working night and day to care for Buffalo’s present traffic, the question naturally arises, What will happen to Buffalo when the new Erie Canal links her with the sea? During the next decade, or less, Buffalo will astonish the whole world by her industrial growth. The effects of the canal project are already being felt, and manufacturing capital is hurrying to Buffalo as never before. The Federal Government is deepening the Niagara River to a depth of twenty-one feet as far down as North Tonawanda, and this, together with the deepening of the Buffalo River, is opening up a new territory for factory sites, soon to be accessible to the largest ships. Millions of dollars of capital are locating, or planning to locate, here. On the one side is the cheap transportation of the Lakes; on the other will soon be the “man-made river reaching to the sea.” With the joining of these waterways no other city in the United States will be able to compete with Buffalo as a manufacturing centre. The actual task of digging the new canal for which the people of New York voted one hundred and one million dollars, and which will connect Buffalo with tidewater by a thousand-ton waterway, is now at hand. Few people realise just how stupendous this task is. While every intelligent American is acquainted with the Panama Canal project, few know that this connecting link between the Lakes and the ocean is a greater public improvement for the State of New York to carry out than is the building of the Panama Canal for the United States Government, and it is of hardly less commercial value. Its cost will be greater than that of Suez, and in a short time its tonnage will be more than that of Suez. The first one hundred and twenty-five miles were under contract in January, 1908, with another sixty-five miles ready to be contracted for.