Page:Walter Renton Ingalls - Wealth and Income of the American People (1924).pdf/160

138 about $400,000,000. This indicates a total value of the canal plant of the nation at the end of 1916 of about one billion dollars. The same figure may be estimated for the end of 1920, there having been no new canal building in recent years. Probably there will be no dissent from the comment that although the useful canals of the country may have cost something like one billion dollars, their actual value is less. Dismissing all questions respecting the Panama Canal, in view of its strategic qualities, no one will be inclined to dispute the statement that $220,000,000 put into the New York Barge Canal was largely money wasted, and that its economic value is less than what it cost. On the other hand, the canal at Sault Ste. Marie, connecting Lake Superior with Lake Michigan, is of great economic value.

As a matter of incidental interest, the report for the Panama Canal in the fiscal year ending June 30, 1921, showed that the excess of receipts over expenditures in that year was approximately $2,712,000, an amount “sufficient to wipe out the last of the deficit resulting from slides in early years of operation.”

There is a large national investment in wharves, drydocks, lighters and cargo handling and coaling equipment, but I know of no good way of estimating this, not even approximately. However, we can get some rough ideas about the subject. In recent testimony before a New York State legislative committee a valuation of 212 million dollars was put upon the municipal wharves of New York City under control of the Department of Docks. In 1920 the tonnage of vessels entering and leaving the Port of New York was