Page:Report of the Oregon Conservation Commission to the Governor (1908 - 1914).djvu/19

 Efficient means of transportation is a necessity of modern civilization. This is peculiarly the case in a nation of such magnificent distances as obtain in the United States, and where an exchange of products is an absolute essential to the happiness, comfort and progress of the people.

"The truth is that there are three agencies of transportation, each of which has a fundamentally different function to perform in the commerce of the world, all of which are as essential as are the three sides of a triangle, and none of which can reach its highest possible efficiency unless accompanied by a symmetrical development of the other two. This trinity of transportation agencies is made up of the wagonway, the railway and the waterway"

It is the last of these agencies with which this section is to deal. Within the limits set apart to this subject we can cover only general principles and some of the more important facts as related to conditions affecting this and neighboring states. The fact that transportation is a necessity would be conceded. That this great public agency must be controlled in the interest of the public is fundamental.

The development of the railway and the attendant expansion and growth of commerce attracted the public attention and centered effort on that agency to the neglect of the waterways. But the reaction has set in and the people now realize that the railway can never adequately meet the needs of commerce and that water transportation, where practicable, is a natural regulator of rates.

In 1900 and 1907 an acute car shortage throughout the United States almost paralyzed trade. Corn rotted in the fields; towns and cities were freezing for lack of coal which could not be moved; mills were closed because their products could not be transported, and the nation was roughly awakened to the fact that commerce had outgrown the facilities for moving it, and that billions in money and years of time would be required to properly care for the existing commerce.

Again the people turned to the waterways as a means not only for regulating rates, but as a necessary and potential factor