Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/301

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HOSE who have only a partial knowledge of the subject, regard the present time as the age of canals. They overlook the generations of time and the vast sums of money expended by other people who have held to the idea of the canal with a national fixity of purpose that has produced astonishing results. The amount of money expended so exceeds the sums spent in the United States, including the Isthmian Canal, that they appear like trivial things.

France has 3,045 miles of artificial waterways and 4,665 miles of canalized rivers, aggregating nearly 8,000 miles. These cost in the last thirty years five hundred million dollars. Belgium has one mile of canal navigation to eight miles of territory. Germany has spent, since 1900, eighty million dollars and has just authorized the expenditure of eighty-five million dollars more. Austria-Hungary within a few years has expended fifty-three million dollars and is yet pushing the work. The canals of Holland and some of those of southern France were built centuries ago.