Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 89.djvu/561

 Popular Science Monthly

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��did it with an artistry that was at once a source of envy and a joy to behoki, the fact that New York city was on an island did not count so much against it. Waterways were the chief hi;;hways. And New York iiad the a(i\antage over every other port on the Atlantic coast in that one of its highways to the interior was a water- way that cut across the Appalachian system at sea level. It was in the days f o 1 1 o w i n g the opening of the Erie Canal, giv- ing it access to the Great Lakes and the heart of the conti- nent, that it 1 e a p e d

ahead in the Much of New York city's freight is transferred to lighters

rare for after having arrived on ships, and is then loaded upon

carts. Millions are annually thus wasted in useless handling commerce.

The railroad, however, has demon- strated that it can compete successfully

���with the interior waterways in getting the products of the rich farms of the Mississippi Valley to the seaboard. So now, New York is handicapped by the fact that it is surrounded by waterways the most important of which cannot be bridged for the transportion of freight. Moreover, because of the narrowness of Manhattan Island, there is little room for freight yards, and little opportunity for getting cars onto the piers alongside the steam- ships. Hav- ing little space on a horizontal plane, the pressure has shot the in- habitantsup into the air, and down into holes in the ground, where they work, where they travel and where they live.

���New York's methods of handling freight at its terminals is discreditable to the largest dty of the western hemisphere. Freight is handled and re-handled, transferred from ships to lighters, and from lighters to carts. If we could cut the cost of handling the freight of the country by only one cent per ton, it would mean a saving of $20,000,000 each year. Every ton of package freight in the United States bears a charge of 74 cents for terminal handling

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