Ohio History Journal

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Ohio Valley Hist

Ohio Valley Hist. Ass'n, Fifth Annual Meeting.           31

 

engaged strong and able men at all points along the river. Pittsburgh,

ever at the front in enterprise, has contributed her full share.

It is our good fortune to have homes in this Valley, dear to many

of us as our birthplace, and to all of us by fond memories and cherished

associations. We, who love the Valley and the River, here pay tribute

to all who have labored for, and through their labors have advanced.

the improvement of the greatest channel of commerce in the world.

They have been governed by no selfish purpose, but by a noble, un

selfish desire to benefit our homes, to make more prosperous our Val-

ley, to leave to their children and to generations yet unborn a heritage

rich in commerce, their valley teeming with intelligence and populous

with contented men and women-with more schools, more churches,

more of all that makes life desirable and that adds to the sum of

human happiness.

 

Another speaker of the evening was the nearest descendant

of Robert Fulton, Rev. C. Seymour Bullock, of Fall River, who

spoke as follows:

Mr. Chairman: His Excellency, the Governor, Your Honor, the

Mayor; Ladies and Gentlemen: I am happy in bringing to you, unof-

ficially, the greetings of a New England city that has just secured for

itself a State appropriation of one million dollars to improve its al-

ready magnificent harbor.

More and more are we coming to realize that the future of our

country depends upon the conservation of its natural resources and

the development and utilization of its waterways as avenues of trans-

portation. The total bankage of the rivers of Europe is but 34,000

miles while the river banks of streams east of the Rocky Mountains,

that are 100 miles long and navigable, will total more than 80,000 miles.

On our Great Lakes in one year we carried freight with a total ton-

nage sufficient to tax the carrying capacity of a train of cars of or-

dinary size that would completely belt the globe. If the engine of that

train were to pull out from Boston it would pass thru San Francisco,

cover the Chinese Empire and Turkestan and Persia, bridge the Med-

iterranean and the Atlantic and speed on again almost to Salt Lake

City with its train of loaded cars before the caboose left Boston. Mr.

Chairman, that is something of a freight train!

With no such system of inland seas the European countries are

fast outstripping us in the race for commerce. France and Germany

have developed or are developing systems of internal water communi-

cation on a basis of one mile of waterway to each twenty-five miles of

territory. Already France has 3,021 miles of canals in operation, while

Germany, aside from the Kaiser Wilhelm, has 15,011 miles of canals

and 1,500 miles of canalized rivers.