Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/476

 460 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

immediately. The cranes will place the cargo on railroad cars placed directly behind them, or send it across the tracks to the warehouse, in the shortest possible time. The railroad tracks have, as a matter of course, connection with all lines of the city ; so it matters not which company will have to do the further transporting. As soon as thus loaded, the cars are removed, others with load for transshipment are taking their places, and their freight is transferred to the empty hold, together with goods that may be taken from the warehouses or from city trucks.

The governing principle of these harbors is not so much the time-saving, the skilled handling of the freight, or the unlimited connection with the country's railways, important as these advantages are; but the fact that no private concern or corporation owns a foot of dock or ground in the plant. It does not matter whether a firm has a single barrel of stuff or a whole shipload to handle, it will have the same right. There is the least possible charge to pay to the drayman, and goods can be left in the warehouses for a stipulated fee until wanted, and can with the issued certificate change hands without being moved. Such harbors have special basins for special substances, as ore, coal, oil, and explosives. It has grain elevators, and at a convenient place a large 100- or 150-tons stationary crane.

Harbors of this class are not so very new. The first basin of the sort was Sandthor Haven, in Hamburg, opened for traffic in 1866. It proved so successful that another basin was soon added ; but as the German political unification just at that period threatened the independence of the old Hanseatic town, the development of the harbor was delayed some time, until she in the eighties, by surrendering her independence to the new Ger- man empire, got money for which the present mighty harbor plant was built. This was simultaneously made a free harbor and soon became the center for the rapidly growing German trans-ocean trade.

The harbor of Copenhagen is newer, and in fact an effort to offset and neutralize the effects of Hamburg's new plant. It is, though smaller, more interesting to the student of civics, for its modern improvements and the happy way in which it has met