Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/197



ADDRESS OF WELCOME 177

the Kootenai, the Pend d'Oreille, the Coeur d'Alene and Spo- kane, draining the lakes, the snow banks, the valleys and the mountains of Montana and Idaho. And two or three miles be- low us this edge of the River touches the soil of Oregon, to fol- low it henceforth to the Pacific. This is surely a joint ownership proposition. And, moreover, this very occasion which draws us together, this great event of the opening of the Celilo Canal, is made possible because Uncle Sam devoted five millions of dollars to blasting a channel through those rocky barriers down there on the river bank. It is a National, not simply a North- west affair.

But while we are thus welcoming and celebrating and felicitating and anticipating, we may well ask ourselves what is after all the large and permanent significance of this event. I find two special meanings in it, one commercial and in- dustrial, the other patriotic and political. First, it is the establishment of water transportation and water power in the Columbia Basin on a scale never before known. Do we yet comprehend what this may mean to us and our descendants in this vast and productive land ? It has been proved over and over again in both Europe and the United States, that the cost of freightage by water is but a fraction, a fifth, a tenth, or sometimes even but a fifteenth, of that by land; but, note, this is under certain conditions. What are those conditions? They are that the water ways be deep enough for a large boat and long enough for continuous long runs. The average freight rate by rail in the United States is 7.32 mills per ton per mile. By the Great Lakes or the Mississippi River it is but one- tenth as much. Freight has in fact been transported from Pittsburgh to New Orleans for half a mill a ton a mile, or only a fifteenth. Hitherto, on account of the break in continuity in the Columbia at Celilo, we have not been able to realize the benefits of waterway transportation. The great event which we are now celebrating confers upon us at one stroke those benefits. Not only are the possibilities of transportation tremendous upon our river, but parallel with them run the