in a single direction.

If a new region distant from a large water course is opened up, as is
being done rapidly in the West through irrigation and dry farming, the
people are entirely dependent on the railways to develop it, to bring
them all the conveniences of the outside world, and to carry the
products of their land to the market.

Branch lines and switches can be built to factories and warehouses,
while boats can reach only those situated along the water-front.

Another advantage of the railroads is that they bill freight all the way
through, and that freight is much more easily transferred from one road
to another. It is much more difficult and expensive to load and reload
freight from boats and barges on account of the high and low water
stages of the river. This difference amounts to as much as sixty feet in
the Ohio River at Cincinnati. Railways make faster time, and the
distance between two points is usually shorter, though sometimes during
the busy season of the railways the river freight reaches its
destination much sooner.

The other class of reasons relates to the railways themselves, which
have always been in open competition with the waterways, and to gain
traffic for themselves, usually charge lower rates to those points to
which boats also carry freight. In many cases they have bought the
steamboat lines so that rates might be kept up, and then, unable to
operate the two lines as cheaply as one, have abandoned the steamboat
lines.

Another method by which the railroads have driven out the water traffic,
is by charging extremely heavy rates for freight hauled a short distance
to or from boats, making it quite as cheap as well as more convenient to
send freight all the way by rail.

Lastly, railroad warehouses, terminals and machinery for handling
freight are all much better than those of inland steamboat lines, except
at some points on the Great Lakes where the traffic is very heavy.

Some of these disadvantages might be overcome by law. In France, where
the waterways are managed better than in any other country, the law
requires that railroad rates be twenty per cent. higher on all heavy
freight than the rates on the same freight if carried by water, and in
several countries railroad companies are not permitted to own or manage
a steamboat line.

These measures are suggestive of what may be done by law to correct
abuses, but laws alone can not accomplish everything. The rivers belong
to all