twelve cents a bushel; from New York to Liverpool about three to seven
cents. That is, for one thousand miles (roughly) the rate by rail is
ten cents. For three thousand miles the rate by water is three cents.
That is, one cent buys the shipper one hundred miles by rail. One cent
buys him one thousand miles by water. Get out a chart and figure out
for yourself what the saving means on wheat via Panama to Liverpool on
a crop--we'll say--of one hundred million bushels, Alberta's future
share alone, leaving Saskatchewan and Manitoba crops to continue going
to Liverpool by Fort William and Montreal. You can figure the distance
to Liverpool via Panama twice or even three times as far as via
Atlantic ports, long as water rates are to rail, as one to ten, the
saving on a one-hundred-million-bushel crop for a single year is enough
to buy terminals, build elevators and run civic ships as Boston and New
Orleans and St. Louis and Kansas City and Portland are doing. Via
Tehuantepec the saving was eight cents a bushel. At that rate your
saving in a year would be eight million dollars for Alberta wheat
alone, not counting dairy products, which are bound to become larger
each year, and coal, which will yet bring the same wealth to Alberta as
to Pennsylvania, and lumber, on which the saving is as one to four.

Please note one point! It is a point usually ignored in all
comparisons of water and rail rates. While sea and lake are the
cheapest method of transportation in the world, canals (unless some
other nation builds them as the United States built Panama) are not so
cheap as sea and lake. When you add to the cost of canals, the
interest on cost, the maintenance, and charge that up against
traffic--for it doesn't matter, though the government does maintain
canals; you pay the bill in the end--canal rates come higher than rail
rates. But in Canada's use of Panama, Canada is not paying for the
building of the canal; and the Lord pays the upkeep of the canal of the
sea.

Take this question of Vancouver rates, from which Canada is standing
back so inertly! Take the latest rates issued! These are subject to
change and correction, but that does not affect final conclusions. It
costs Manitoba and Saskatchewan from twelve to nineteen cents a hundred
weight to send grain to Fort William, then during open navigation from
four to five cents to reach seaboard at Montreal. It costs Alberta,
being farther west, twenty-five cents to