The railroads that terminated on the shores of Lake Erie engaged in the Lake traffic at an early date by establishing ship lines that gathered freight at all Lake ports of importance for transportation to the East, and, of course, carried the traffic from the East to the farthest points on the Lakes. These steamers had a marked influence on the development of the West. Of such lines as that which runs from Galveston and New Orleans to New York in connection with the Southern Pacific Railroad, only mention need be made, but the fact that the extension of railroads in this way across wide stretches of the waters of the country, has had a marked influence upon the prosperity of the country as well as upon that of the railroads, is memorable. Another notable feature of the coasting trade is a revival of the old system, practised by such merchants as Derby, of Salem, when they built ships especially to carry their own goods to market. Thus, when petroleum was found in Texas, the Standard Oil Company built many vessels to carry the crude oil from the wells to the refineries at New York. The oil was taken through pipes from the wells to the ship, and it was pumped from the ship into tanks at the refineries. With the aid of such port facilities the cost of transportation was reduced to the lowest figure. The United States Steel Corporation, owning ore beds near Lake Superior and mills near Pittsburg, built a fleet of ships to carry the ore to points on Lake Erie whence it could be shipped on a private railroad to the mills. The ore in the beds was scooped up with steam shovels and dumped into cars, by which it was transported to high trestles on the edge of the harbor. On the trestles it was dumped into pockets, from which it fell through chutes into the vessel, the hatches of which were spaced to correspond with the spaces of the chutes. A cargo of more than 10,000 tons has been loaded in two hours. At the port of discharge other scoops (a sort of dredge), made to operate through the hatches, lift the cargo out of the ship at a rate of more than a thousand tons an hour.