m of interlocking service such as we have got
to have.

My conception of the future of the New York Barge Canal and the canal
across New Jersey and the Chesapeake and Ohio and all the waterways is
that the companies operating on them shall pick up and deliver at
every important terminal point by lines which shall radiate out by
motor trucks from 50 to 100 miles, and they shall take from these
places goods thus brought to their station. So that if when, for
example, they were delivering goods from Kentucky to Illinois, it
might start from a farm or from an inland village by motor truck and
go to the nearest waterway station, there to be picked up by a vessel
and to be carried down the Kentucky and Ohio to a point sufficiently
near in Illinois to where it was to go, there to be picked up by motor
trucks which would carry it to its destination, and it should be
billed through by one bill of lading. That would definitely establish
that the vehicles and highways are not accidental or incidental but an
essential factor. That, it seems to me, is what we are coming to
before very long. I imagine we will come to it almost before we think
of it.

From that are a number of inferences. The public authorities have got
to be sufficiently educated to make a good thing possible. They have
got to learn, as many a farmer has to learn, that the most costly
thing in the world is a bad road; that as compared with seal-skin furs
and platinum mud is far more costly an item; and that there is no such
evidence of a muddy state of mind in a community as a muddy state of
highways in the community. They go together--mental and physical mud.

Now, let us see whether our idea is false or true in its application.
The Hudson River has by it six tracks of railroad. The fleet of
vessels upon the Hudson River was never as great, never so new or well
equipped as to-day. The vessel with the largest passenger capacity, or
at least second largest (6,000 persons), is in operation on that
river. The freight carried on the river amounts to over 8,000,000 tons
a year by water. I put a factory at Troy because I could get by water
express service at freight rates, loading machines on the boat in the
evening and have them delivered in New York the next morning, while to
ship the same material by railroad to New York would require three to
five days by freight.

Directly back from the river bank on either side are two of our fine
highways. Neither the railroad