The Erie Canal, connecting Buffalo and Albany and giving the Great Lakes a water outlet at New York, is being widened and deepened at an expense of $101,000,000. The propaganda of the American Rivers and Harbors Congress, looking to the appropriation of $500,000,000 to be spent in a systematic program of inland waterway development, is meeting with encouragement in every part of the country, and it is the expectation of those who believe that the Government should commit itself to such a program, that within 25 years the stimulus to waterway development given by the opening of the Panama Canal, will give to the United States one of the finest systems of inland waterways in the world.

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CHAPTER XXX

A NEW COMMERCIAL MAP

HE most rapid change in the commercial map of the world wrought in centuries will be witnessed during the during the years following the completion of the Panama Canal. Cities that heretofore have been mere way stations on the international routes of trade will grow into rich centers where the new roads of the commercial world will cross. On the other hand, cities which in the past have gloried in a trade supremacy of international recognition will see themselves displaced and their prestige lost. The readjustment will not be the matter of a day or a year; even a generation may pass before it is completed; but the ultimate changes will certainly be greater and more world-encompassing than anyone now can forecast.

The capture of Constantinople by the Turks was directly responsible for the discovery of the New World. It cut off the cities of the Mediterranean from communication with India, and sent Columbus westward in quest of another passage, which could not be obstructed by the Mussulman tyrants of the East. At last the Panama Canal is to afford that passage, and to bring the whole earth into smaller compass.

Of course, the United States will be the first

to realize the great benefits of the canal. It will double the efficiency of the American Navy by permitting it to concentrate its forces on either ocean in shorter time, by weeks, than can be done by any other nation; consequently, it will add to American military prestige throughout the world. The benefits immediately accruing to the people of the United States will be as great in a commercial way as in military advantage. As the capture of Constantinople caused the upbuilding of many notable regions through the transformation of international trade routes, so will the completion of the Panama Canal open up new markets and new opportunities to the Mississippi Valley, the world's greatest granary. Its grain and meat products, loading by way of Gulf ports, can go to the ends of the earth with but little outlay for expensive rail transportation. It is even probable that the great awakening incident to the opening of the canal, may hasten the day when the Lakes-to-the-Gulf waterway will be an accomplished fact and when ships may load in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, St. Paul, and Minneapolis and sail directly to the ports of the world, thus beginning an era of commercial development surpassing even the wonderful growth of the half century just closed.

Pittsburgh may then be able to send its tremendous output of manufactures to all parts of the world without transhipment; Kansas City will feel the stimulus of the new waterway; and the Pacific coast, long cut off from the eastern section of the United States by high mountain barriers that have been only partially overcome

by railroads, will find its great resources within marketable distance of the Eastern States.

Canada, too, will feel the stimulus of the canal. No longer will its great crops have to find their slow outlet over railroads that must cross the backbone of a continent, but, pursuing the avenues of least resistance, they may move to all parts of the world by way of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River.

South America will greatly benefit by the completion of the canal. Already its west coast countries and cities are getting ready for the boom of business that is to follow. Brought thousands of miles nearer to all western trade centers - so close that their raw products and American manufactured products can be exchanged to advantage there will be a growth of trade whose prospect already has awakened the lethargic South American to the possibilities ahead.

These possibilities well may be considered by the business men of the United States. To-day North America buys a large percentage of the products of South America; but, when the South Americans have money to spare, they spend only $1 out of $8 in North America the other $7 goes to Europe. The American exporter will find himself quickened by the history-making change the canal will produce and, if he goes at it in earnest, he will be in a position to reverse the present situation and get $7 of South American trade where Europe gets only $1.

Australia and New Zealand will experience, perhaps, a greater change in the trade routes than any other countries outside of the Americas.

The Australian commerce now is largely carried by way of Suez. The opening of the Panama Canal will place New Zealand 1,200 miles nearer to London than it is by way of Suez, and the eastern ports of Australia will be as near to England by way of Panama as by Suez. All Australasian ports will be brought several thousand miles closer to the Atlantic ports of the United States than they are to-day. No one who has heard an Australasian complain of the long delays and the excessive freight rates that intervene between him and his American shoes, can doubt that the closer proximity of American markets will be welcomed in that faraway land under the southern cross. Sydney will be 4,000 miles nearer to New York through the Panama Canal, and 5,500 miles nearer to New Orleans and Galveston.

The transcontinental tonnage now handled by the railroads, which ultimately will go by the canal, aggregates 3,000,000 tons a year. The seaboard sections of the United States, of course, will benefit more largely than interior points, for the reason that interior points will have to take a combined rail-and-water route. This will involve railroad transportation and transhipment of cargo, also rehandling charges. After the canal is opened it is probable that the railroads will prefer to supply the intermountain States directly from eastern sources, instead of maintaining the existing policy of giving low rates to Pacific coast cities, so as to give them dominance over the shipping business of the intermountain region. The total coast-to-coast traffic of the railroads is said to approximate one-fifth of the entire traffic