also said that he had eight large appropriation bills yet to come in with several hundred amendments. This was my opportunity. I informed Mr. Randall that he should lose no time in sending for absent members. It was my last day in congress, and Mr. Randall was informed that if he succeeded in defeating the stamp bill a quorum would be demanded upon every amendment coming in for the remainder of the session.

Mr. Randall said, "You know we adjourn at noon, and if you insist upon your demand many of the appropriation bills will be lost and the departments will have no money." My reply was that if he would keep his promise to me, when the stamp bill was incorporated in the post office bill, there would be no trouble. If the appropriation bills were lost President Cleveland could call a special session of congress to raise the money. Senators and members were sent to plead with me to withdraw my demand, but I refused to yield. I was determined to secure the adoption of my proposition or block all other legislation if possible. I said to Mr. Randall that I had followed his lead for four years in his fight for protection and now he could follow me for a while. I finally demanded tellers so as to secure a correct count. Mr. McMillin was named with myself. The leaders offered me two minutes to further explain the special stamp feature, already explained many times. I used the two minutes, giving an illustration of the practical use of a special stamp in an urgent case, and further made the points in favor of the stamp.

Meanwhile, as the members passed between the tellers, I saw that the count was coming my way and stood seventy-nine to sixty-six in support of the bill. Mr. McMillin turned to me and said "You were very good last night to help me with my pension bills and I will withdraw my motion to agree with the senate against your pet measure." My reply was, "Please do not put it upon that ground.

Simply acknowledge that you are beaten." This he did. All opposition to the bill was withdrawn. Mr. Townshend's motion that the house insist upon the stamp was carried. The final report was adopted by the senate appropriation, special stamp, and all, and in a few minutes the engrossed bill was taken to the President's room, signed by President Arthur, and the special stamp bill was a law.

Wasn't it worth the effort and anxiety? I thought so, and the stamp has proved popular, convenient and profitable. It is fair to state that the purpose underlying the introduction of the bill, and the efforts to enact it into law, were to provide a convenience for the public, first, rather than a profit to the government. But both were secured. The government never divides its profits.

The following facts and statistics relating to the special delivery stamp may be interesting:

Act passed in Congress, March 4, 1885. Went into effect, October 1, 1885. Number used first fiscal year, nine months, 896,344.

Number pieces delivered 1919, 58,544,387. Number pieces delivered 1885 to 1919, 450,072,072.

Net revenue to the government, $9,001,441. On August 4, 1886, the system was made to include all classes of mail matter.

On March 2, 1902, the law was amended, providing that ten cents in ordinary stamps, in addition to regular postage affixed to a letter or package marked "special delivery," entitled the matter to all privileges.

In the March number of STATE SERVICE there appeared an article by Albert Lee calling attention to the peril to which the new barge canal is subjected by the

proposed St. Lawrence river project favored by western and middle states. This article by Mr. Baker gives the other side of a question very vital to the shipping interests of a large section of the United States. Mr. Baker makes the bold statement that the new barge canal is founded on a fallacy and that it will never carry enough traffic to warrant its great cost to New York State. It is well for the people of the Empire State to know the arguments used on the other side.- EDITOR.

F

OR a quarter of a century and more, the project of joining the Great Lakes and the Atlantic by a ship canal has enticed engineers and commercial men. In the closing decade of the last century the navigation interests on the great lakes succeeded in having elaborate surveys made by the government of various possible routes for such a canal. It has already been recited how the commercial interests of New York city and Buffalo took alarm at this and succeeded in committing the State of New York to the rival enterprise of a barge canal planned to be big enough to carry freight at very low cost between the terminals but unsuitable for navigation by boats fit to sail the lakes or the ocean.

The ignorance of practical transportation requirements by those who planned the New York barge canal is well illustrated by their failure to make any provision for terminals until work on the canal had been in progress for ten years. Their greatest mistake, however, was in attempting to make a canal which would absolutely require transfer of freight at each end. Competent engineers called public attention to the blunder at the time, but without result.

There appears no prospect at the present time that the New York barge canal, standing by itself, can ever attract traffic enough to justify its cost. Its only prospect of success is in doing what its designers attempted to prevent connecting the great lakes and the Atlantic. Whenever the canal is available for vessels of 10-ft. draft, we may expect to see through barge traffic between all points along the Atlantic coast from Boston, along the Sound to New York and thence through the canal to Buffalo and to other points on Lake Erie and as far westward as Detroit, perhaps even to Chicago and Milwaukee and Duluth. If the government opens a sea-level canal across New Jersey and enlarges the Chesapeake and Delaware canal, then through barges can run between the Lake Erie ports and points on the coast as far south as Beaufort.

The low headroom of the fixed bridges over the New York barge canal is not an insurmountable obstacle. With geared turbines and forced draft, a lot of power can be put into a boat without requiring much headroom on board or height of funnels. Of course, it remains to be determined how much traffic could be developed between the southern Atlantic coast ports and the lake cities that would use so roundabout a water route in preference to the direct rail route. That it is practicable to build boats which will be capable of navigating safely the lower lakes, the New York barge canal and the Atlantic coast protected waterways, there can be little doubt.

If such through navigation is established on a considerable scale, it will arouse anew the

popular demand in the interior of the continent for direct connection between the great lakes and the ocean. That demand found expression a quarter century ago in the projects for a deep waterway to the Atlantic which were recommended by two successive government boards. Unfortunately, the Mississippi valley interests succeeded in diverting the popular sentiment at Chicago to the support of that will-o'-the-wisp, the lakes-to-the-gulf deep waterway project. project. With the backing of Chicago withdrawn and the opposition of New York certain, it was useless to continue further the agitation for the Atlantic coast outlet from the lakes.

The old traditions still exist. In the last congress, a resolution which was adopted to have the international waterways commission report on a deep waterway from the lakes to the ocean by way of the St. Lawrence was opposed by the New York and New England delegations in congress.

That opposition is based on prejudice and on ignorance of the commercial conditions of the present day. In the agitation of twenty years ago to secure the passage of the $101,000,000 bond law in the State of New York, to raise the money for the barge canal, the urgent plea was made that the canal was an absolute necessity to save New York city from the loss of its export business and the consequent decline of its commercial prosperity. perity. A score of years have passed by, during which the old canals have lost all their commercial importance and the new canal is practically unused, yet New York and the industries of New England have grown as never before.

Lowering the cost of transportation between the Atlantic coast and the interior cities on the lakes will benefit the Atlantic seaport cities ten times as much on domestic traffic as any loss of foreign business could injure them.

The St. Lawrence water route to the sea

The experiences of the war, moreover, have been illuminating as to the gateway from the great lakes to the sea by way of the St. Lawrence. Lake shipyards contributed splendidly in response to the appeal for ships to win the war, and all their ships had to reach the sea through the St. Lawrence

canals.

Except for the war, Canada would by this time have had the work far advanced on its

enlargement of the Welland canal between Lakes Erie and Ontario. This new waterway will have locks 800 ft. long and 80 ft. wide, with 30 ft. depth of water over the miter sills. It will therefore pass any of the lake steamers and many ocean vessels, all that would be likely to attempt the voyage from the ocean inland to the lakes. This canal with its seven locks will overcome 327 ft. of the total descent from the level of Lake Erie the total descent from the level of Lake Erie

to the ocean.

About one-third the work on this canal has

been done. When it is completed, all that will be needed for the free passage of ocean vessels to the lake ports and of the lake shipping to the ocean will be the improvement for navigation of the St. Lawrence from Lake Ontario to Montreal. The total fall in this distance is about 240 ft., chiefly concentrated at a few rapids.

By building great dams across the river at various points, these rapids can be submerged, and the river converted into a series of deep pools connected by locks. The vast waterpower created by these dams, in view of the constantly increasing demand for power in this section far removed from coal supplies, would be of enormous value. In fact, plans were made years ago to develop power by damming the river as a private enterprise. The plans failed of execution only because of difficulty in securing the requisite authority from the two governments.

as the result of its investigations twenty years ago, advocated the route across New York by way of the Oswego, Mohawk and Hudson rivers in preference to the St. Lawrence

route. This choice was made because of

anticipated difficulties in obtaining joint action by the United States and Canada, with reference to the St. Lawrence route. With the experiences of the war behind us, these difficulties now appear small.

Moreover, much more is known now concerning water transportation than was known when the engineers studied this question a whether ocean vessels would navigate a deep quarter of a century ago. It is very doubtful waterway across the State of New York through such narrow channels as it would be practicable to make in the Mohawk and Oswego rivers. But ocean vessels could safely and rapidly navigate the broad St. Lawrence from Lake Ontario to Montreal, if the river were converted into deep pools by

a series of dams.

In order that the Atlantic coast shall also

benefit by this waterway, all that is needed is to take advantage of the natural route from the lower St. Lawrence to New York by way of Lake Champlain and the Hudson river. The New York barge canal will soon afford 12-ft. navigation on this route all the way from New York to Canada. The government's surveys of twenty years ago showed the great advantage and low cost of this route for a ship canal deep enough for ocean vessels.

Through vessels from lake ports to Europe

of wheat or dressed meat or steel plates, she can save the cost of rail haul to the seaboard and.of transfers of cargo there.

This is not a dream. It is a reality. On June 25, 1919, the first ocean steamer to sail direct from Chicago to Liverpool left Chicago with a cargo of meat. The steamer is the Lake Granby, of 4,100 tons, 261 ft. long and 43-ft. beam. She is limited by the St. Lawrence canals to a draft of 14 ft., but takes on added cargo for her ocean voyage at Montreal.

This is the first of a fleet of 15 vessels under construction for this service by the United States shipping board, and it is stated that the rate for the shipment is only $1.25 per 100 lbs. The railway rate on dressed beef to New York is 47.5c., and besides this the cost of transfer at New York from car to steamer is saved, with all the chances for delay and injury in this process.

The New York barge canal enterprise, on which $150,000,000 has been expended, originated in an engineering fallacy. The theory was propounded that the same vessel could not economically navigate the ocean and the lakes and the channels connecting them. The originator of that fallacy failed to understand how large are the terminal and transfer expenses compared with the cost of movement. If transfers in transit can be cut out, the saving is so great that a ship need not be the most economical for either ocean or lake service. The lake harbors and connecting channels limit the draft of vessels to 21 ft. but a very capacious and seaworthy vessel can be built on this draft.

Again, the opening of such a waterway would permit lake vessels to pass out to the seaboard at the close of navigation and engage in ocean commerce. It is doubtless true that for the special ore and coal carriers on the