Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/475

 THE CRADLE OF THE TRUST 459

be found in our harbor system. Our harbors have, as a result of the above-mentioned pronounced individualistic development, remained in the same condition as before the introduction of steam as a means of locomotion. While the nations of the Old World have introduced a new class of harbors providing proper facilities for modern vessels and adequate connection with the railroads, we have save for some dredging, lengthening of piers, improvement of breakwaters, and the like left our harbors just as they were when the first steamer and the first locomotive were built. Each corporation, railroad, or mercantile firm has a little harbor of its own a dock line, a pier, a slip, or whatever name they happen to give to it ; and thus the harbor of our modern metropolis in reality is a shorter or longer chain of small individual harbors, with the most limited facilities in direction of hoisting machinery, storage room, and railroad connection.

This form of harbor is good and sufficient for certain forms of traffic or industry; it accommodates the local consumption through the large wholesale merchants, and the several railroad companies for their coal and ore traffic, and it is properly main- tained in every metropolitan city; but as an accommodation for the national commerce it is too expensive and time-wasting. Besides this form of harbor, or in addition to it, there has, in the larger commercial centers of Europe, grown up a new class of harbor, as different from it as the printing-press of our dailies is from the old-time hand-press. We may properly class the present form of our harbor as industrial, for it accommodates our factories and our lumber and coal yards, distributed over the town as they are ; while the new and modern harbor may be classed as commercial. A short discription will suffice to show wherein they differ.

A commercial harbor consists of several large basins, directly open for admission of the vessels, permitting these, on the simplest possible sailing or maneuver lines, without need of towing, without passing of locks, gates, bridges, or any sort of obstruction, to run directly to the moorings. Moored here, movable steam, electric, or hydraulic cranes are placed directly opposite the hatchways ; these opened, the unloading goes on