Page:History of Southeast Missouri 1912 Volume 1.djvu/426

 366 HISTORY OF SOUTHEAST MISSOURI and there has been a failure to install freight handling machinerj- and to provide ample ter- minal facilities in the towns. There has been a failure to keep the equipment of the boats up to the standard demanded by the travel- ing public and to increase the speed or the comfort of travel on the river. These are some of the causes which have brought about the virtual destruction of river traffic. We must not conclude, however, that these causes will continue to operate and to bring about the same result. There are rea- sons for believing that river transportation will once more become important and perhaps reach a degree of importance which it did not possess even in its most prosperous days. It is a serious situation which confronts the people of a country when there comes a con- gestion of traffic, when the means of trans- portation are inadequate to supply the needs of the country. Railroad owners in this country have themselves confessed that we have reached a point in our development when it is almost if not entirely, impossible, to build railroads sufficient to handle the traffic offered them. "We are virtually compelled then to turn to the river for relief. Besides this there is a movement already on foot to provide terminal facilities and to equip boats with modern machinery and to bring them up to the high standard of efficiency displayed by the railroads. This movement will iin- ddubtedly result in securing for the owners of boats a part at least of the traffic now car- ried by the railroads. More than all else, however, which leads us to lielieve in the com- ing importance of the river is a movement known as the deep waterway movement, by which it is planned to increase the depth of the channel of the Mississippi sufficiently to allow the operation of larger boats and even of sea-going vessels as far up as St. Louis. If this proposed plan is ever carried out it will undoubtedly mean a great deal for South- east Missouri. It will then be possible for residents of these counties to ship their prod- ucts to almost any part of the world at very much less than the railroads now chai'ge. Taken in connection with the opening of the Panama Canal and the consequent shortening and cheapening of transportation to the sea, such a use of the ^Mississippi would mean a great deal. Resources The great resources of Southeast Missouri are soil and climate, minerals, timber, and water-power. These do not exhaust the list, but they are the great items in the inventory of potential wealtli. First place among these must be given to soil and climate. No part of the earth's surface has richer or more pro- ductive soil than is to be found in some coun- ties of the section. This is not merely in small tracts, hundreds of square miles of fertile soil exist. Taken in connection with a climate, tliat by reasons of its rainfall and its long summers renders possible the production of both the great staple grains, corn and wheat, and of cotton, this soil is the greatest asset of the entire section. ilineral wealth as we have seen is very great, and timber in the past has been one of the great resources. There is enough left of the great timbered areas to represent mil- lions of dollars yet. The water-power of these southeast coun- ties is doubtless destined to be of gi-eat value and importance. It has as yet been developed except the smallest way, but it forms one of the sources of future wealth of the highest importance.