public transportation as meaning essentially the railroads. Yet so
rapidly in the last five years has the law of transportation been
developed that it is a little bit difficult for us to keep up with the
rush of this movement.

There came into the world a new tool--the internal-combustion
engine--destined to work almost as great a change in the human life as
the steam engine in its time, making possible a tool for the waterway
that the waterway had never had before, making it possible to use for
the highway what the highway had never had before, making necessary
the alteration of the highway to suit the new tool built for it. It
has never been true until now; it has just now become true that the
waterway and highway have been, as regards the tools for their use, on
a technical and scientific level with the railway. The Government is
just putting in operation this month the first great barges for the
Mississippi River intended to carry ore south and coal north, made
possible because of the internal-combustion engine. The tool has come,
the internal-combustion engine is altering the face of the marine
world. So that we do not really need but over 6 feet of water in the
northern Mississippi to carry 1,800 tons of ore in one boat. We look
upon the development of the New York State barge canal with a
certainty of its profitable use for the Nation, for with a 12-foot
draft we know we can carry 2,500 tons in any vessel constructed for
the purpose, driven by internal-combustion engines. The tool for the
job and the way made ready for the tool.

I go into my shop to put up a hammer. What is the essential feature of
my hammer's operation? The foundation. It may be the most powerful
hammer made, but unless given a sufficient sub-structure it can only
be destructive. So for the waterway, so for the highway. You may have
the most perfect equipment for their use but the instrument must work
in a proper environment. So the waterway, then, the last few years--in
fact, very recently--has come rapidly into its own. It is within 18
months, gentlemen, that I stood upon the first load of ore going south
on the Mississippi River and saw it enter the port of St. Louis. It
was only yesterday that I sent to the Senate my formal report urging
Government ownership and operation of all the northern coastal canals
from North Carolina to New England, with the certainty that adequate
and efficient vessels could be provided for their use.

Now, the