UNCLE MVM&ORD VATLOABS. 2?1-

individual in the Union. What he has to say about Mississippi Biver
Improvement will be found in the Appendix**

Sometimes, half a dozen figures will reveal, as with a lightning-
flash, the importance of a subject which ten thousand laboured words,
with the same purpose in view, had leffe at last but dim and uncertain.
Here is a case of the sort—paragraph from the ' Cincinnati Commer-
cial'—

* The towboat " Jos. B. Williams " is on her way to New Orleans with a
tow of thirty-two barges, containing six hundred thousand bushels (seventy-
six pounds to the bushel) of coal exclusive of her own fuel, being the largest
tow ever taken to New Orleans or anywhere else in the world. Her freight

THE TOW.
bill, at 3 cents a bushel, amounts to £18,000. It would take eighteen
hundred cars, of three hundred and thirty-three bushels to the car, to trans-
port this amount of coal. At #10 per ton, or £100 per car, which would be
a fair price for the distance by rail, the freight bill would amount to #180,000,
or £162,000 more by rail than by river. The tow will be taken from Pitts-
burg to New Orleans in fourteen or fifteen days. It would take one hundred
trains of eighteen cars to the train to transport this one tow of six hundred
thousand bushels of coal, and even if it made the usual speed of fast freight
lines, it would take one whole summer to put it though by rail.'
When a river in good condition can enable one to save $162,000
and a whole summer's time, on a single cargo, the wisdom of taking
measures to keep the river in good condition is made plain to even tbe
uncommercial mind.
1 See Appendix B