m New-Orleans, and find it
profitable. Some run even as high as three thousand miles up that
river and the Missouri; a voyage nearly as long as to Europe, and make
money by it. But the circumstances are very different. They do not
leave the dock at New-Orleans with even more than enough fuel on board
for the whole trip, as the ocean steamers do. If they did they could
carry no freight. But they stop every twelve to eighteen hours and
take on wood just as they need it, fifty to a hundred cords at a time;
and instead of occupying all of their available room with wood, they
have the steamer full of cargo, and have on board only fifty or sixty
tons of fuel at a time, and only half that weight on an average. None
of the best steamers on those rivers could take enough wood on board
for the whole three thousand miles, even though they should not have a
ton of freight. And compared with ocean steamers of the same engine
power, they do not cost half of the money, I might say generally, not
one third of the money. There is no reason, then, why these steamers
should not carry large quantities of freight and make large sums of
money by it. They have the great elements, fuel, freight capacity, and
prime cost in their favor.

There is a large class of freights which are not transportable by
steam on long ocean voyages under any conditions. We will grant that
under the most favorable circumstances, where rich and costly articles
are transported in small bulk, that propellers running at a low rate
of speed, or just fast enough to anticipate sailing vessels, will make
a living. But change the class of these freights into the great
average class of those filling the thousands of sailing vessels, and
deprive these screw vessels of an immense emigrant passenger traffic,
and they would not pay their running expenses by fifty per cent. This
style of freights, sailing vessels in their great competition have
reduced to the lowest paying figure. The margin left for profit is so
small that our ship-owners constantly complain that unless there are
changes they must go into other business; and many of them say this
honestly, as is shown by the hundreds of ships which of late years we
can always find lying up, awaiting improvement in business. Now, let
even the slowest and cheapest running screw vessel attempt to carry
the same freights, to say nothing of fast side-wheel mail vessels, and
we shall see against what odds the screw or other steamer ha