Page:History of Southeast Missouri 1912 Volume 1.djvu/425

 HISTORY OF SOUTHEAST MISSOURI 365 longer crowded with passengers and over- loaded with freight; the passengers travel by train and the freight is carried in the same way. The causes of this change in transpor- tation are many. One of them is the greater speed of railroad traffic and another greater certainty. Railroad owners soon came to see that a great advantage could be obtained by operating their trains on a schedule. Rail- roads also had a great advantage in that they reached every part of the country so that steamboat owners. In a competition of this kind the advantage was all on the side of the railroads. They had a traffic which could not be taken from them by the steam- boats under any circumstances, the inland traffic was all carried by rail and the money thus derived was used to enable railroad op- erators to fight steamboat transportation in those communities and towns situated along the river. There seems to be no doubt that the present failure to use the river transpor- SouTHERN Mississippi Steamer persons living away from the river might travel to their destination or ship their goods to market without transfer or i-eshipment. These advantages which the railroad pos- sessed were natural and legitimate advan- tages. It is not quite clear, however, that the very gi-eat ascendancy which the railroads came to have was attained altogether by le- gitimate methods. The fierce competition be- tween the river and the railroads no doubt impelled railroad owners and managers to re- sort to methods not legitimate in fighting tation is due in part at least, to unfair meth- ods of comi^etition on the part of the rail- roads. No doubt, however, the decline of river traf- fic was due also in part to a failure on the part of the owners of boats to provide proper facilities for handling the traffic and to bring their methods to a high state of efficiency. The owners of steamboats today operate them in about the same way in which steamboats were operated before the war. Just as for- merly the freight is still handled by hand