[Volume XXV
THE CHICAGO BANKER
14
Editorial
for twenty-five cents, you have added twenty-five cents to the farmer’s price for his wheat. (Applause.) Every man who produces a dollar’s worth of material for the market, is thus interested not merely in the market price in foreign lands and the market price in the centers at home, but he is vitually interested in getting that dollar’s worth of goods to the market where it will be disposed of. It is a fact that is admitted, that the railroad cannot carry this as cheaply as the boat can; and therefore every farmer is interested in establishing water communication, wherever water communication is possible. (Applause.) And throughout our agricultural section, every village lives upon the farm and every citizen in every village makes his money indirectly out of the soil, as every merchant sells to the farmer only as the farmer can buy and sells only so much as the farmer can pay for. Every merchant, every lawyer, every physician, every man of every calling and occupation, lives upon the farm and is interested in the cost of transportation of every bushel that is raised on the farm. (Applause.)
“But that is not all. The manufacturer cannot produce unless he has a market and he can sell only what people can afford to buy; and if you will increase the amount that the farmer receives by lessening the amount that is to be deducted for transportation, the farmer being able to buy more, the manufacturer can manufacture more and the laborer has more demand for his work to produce what the rest of the people can buy. Thus every laborer in the United States is vitally interested in water transportation, for it means more money to be spent for what he has to produce. (Applause.)
“I think I have given a reason why everybody should be interested in this matter of cheaper transportation. And what I say in regard to the Mississippi Valley, I want to repeat in regard to the land that lies on the Eastern slope of the Alleghanies and on the Western slope of the Rockies. I believe in improving the waterways everywhere. * * * * I believe it is the duty of those charged with the business of government to develop those things upon which a nation’s prosperity depends.”
If you have read and digested the foregoing you cannot fail in that act of good citizenship on November 3d. You will cast your vote for the deep waterway bond proposal.
W
Newspaper Portraiture
Being greatly disappointed that its solicitors for special bank advertising anent the recent Illinois bankers’ convention met with no response, a certain Chicago paper, sometimes called “the organ of real estate board,” relieved the feelings of its editor by taking a covert fling at The Chicago Banker. It charged editorially that The Banker secured its liberal patronage “in consideration of running bankers’ pictures. It thus repeated a former slur upon bankers by intimating that they directly or indirectly paid to have their portraits printed. This particular editor and his publication are “has beens” but don’t know it. In their day it was pay for everything, pictures, puffs, and fakes. That day is past. No reputable paper will accept pay for news or picture service and there are many papers which from lack
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ment in their favor needs to be created. That educational work is done. The people favor the improvement of real rivers and harbors and the building of real canals. This body has done much to create and sustain such an opinion. The project of a deep channel from Chicago to the Gulf has enlisted national enthusiasm. More trade is calling for more terminals and ampler highways. The value of the waterway and the need of multiplied avenues of transportation are universally recognized.”
Mr. Taft, the republican nominee for the presidency said in part:
“We find that the enormous increase in the productions of our people in all lines of industrial activity has outstripped the ability of our railroad systems, extensive and efficient as they are, to transport them. We find that during the ten years ending with 1905, the internal commerce of our country has increased 118 per cent while the railroad transportation facilities during the same time have increased only twenty per cent. It has been pointed out that to supply this deficiency by the construction of additional railways and necessary terminals would require a capital investment of $5,500,-000,000 and this construction when completed would make no provision for the further increase of our commerce. Shall we have a repetition of the experience of three years ago when the farmer saw his grain wasting in the field and the manufacturer stopped his plant for want of raw material and our finished products lay in the warehouse—all for lack of facilities to transport them? * * * * Transportation then is the question of the hour. How can we solve it? We must have recourse to the waterways.
“My own judgment is that every great improvement like that of the Lakes-to-the-Gulf, like that of the Ohio river, like that of the Missouri river, like that of the Atlantic seaboard inland waterways, should be treated by itself as one great enterprise, just as we have treated the Panama canal, and that provision should be made by bonds or otherwise for the setting aside of a fund, sufficient to complete it as rapidly as possible.”
The closing day’s speech was by Mr. Bryan, who has been in the work of conserving natural resources for years. Among other things he said:
“We are an exporting nation. We send our agricultural products to foreign markets, and when our wheat or our cotton reaches the London market, its price is fixed by the competition which it meets. If a bushel of wheat sells for a dollar in London, and it takes fifty cents to get it from the farm to London, the farmer gets fifty cents a bushel for his wheat. If you can so improve transportation that the farmer will get his wheat from his farm to Liverpool
Your Duty on November Third
The bankers and other good citizens of Illinois have a sacred duty to perform on election day, November 3d, much more important to posterity than the selection of a governor for four years ; more important than signifying a preference among the presidential aspirants. Much depends upon your vote for the bond issue with which to begin construction of the deep waterway “from lake to gulf.” The people have set themselves the task of conservation of natural resources and Illinois is the first great state to attempt practical and lasting results.
The first of the month a national waterway convention was held in Chicago which secured the attendance and the pledges of both Taft and Bryan favoring prompt and energetic work for development of natural waterways. Waterway associations have been organized in every congressional district in Illinois and a meeting has been held in the 6th, the district of William Lorimer, the original deep waterway congressman, the real father of the movement in its present form. Mr. Lorimer spoke at this convention and among other things said :
“As Judge Lindly, who has just preceded me, suggested, he is perfecting a precinct organization in every voting precinct in the state of Illinois. He has written to five thousand democratic and republican precinct committeemen. In his communications he requested that they secure the names of five or more persons in each precinct, who are active in the affairs of their political party, to organize the people in their neighborhood in favor of the twenty-mil-lion-dollar bond issue. Thus far, in response, he has received the names of forty thousand persons who have volunteered their services between now and election day. They are about equally divided ; twenty thousand democrats and twenty thousand republicans. In addition to organizing in each precinct, we are making a tour of the state, and intend to hold meetings in every county seat and every large city in Illinois, to discuss the importance of constructing a deep waterway from the lake to the Gulf of Mexico, and the benefits to follow therefrom to the people of the Illinois and the Mississippi valley ; the use to which the money derived from the bonds shall be put; also the immediate and direct benefits that will accrue to the people of our state by the expenditure of these funds, in co-operation with the federal government, in constructing a deep waterway and developing the water-power.”
Lest we forget the chief utterances of men conspicuous in the public eye a few quotations may help to decide some one to on November 3d cast his vote for the beginning of this great work, first of all, in Illinois. First of all in a practical way came James J. Hill, giving us a famous railroad builder’s view of the deep waterway as a channel of increasing prosperity for everybody. Mr. Hill said :
“The traffic of the country will need, as soon as normal conditions are restored by a return of confidence, all the assistance that waterways can give. It is fortunate that no public senti-