This Day in 1913 in The Record: March 20, 1913

Wednesday, March 20, 1913. "We are only upon the threshold of the marvelous rich treasure house of our country," Troy attorney William J. Roche tells the Current Topics club tonight. Roche envisions the "final means of solving the cost of commodities and bettering the living conditions of the nation" through more transportation of goods by water.

Mayor Cornelius F. Burns introduces Roche as "the champion of waterway transportation" at the club's annual banquet, The Record reports. In our own reporter's words, "It is doubtful if other disciples of DeWitt Clinton have ventured so far in their theories or prophecies" on the benefits of water transportation as Roche does tonight.

Roche believes that "the methods of scientific farming and intensive cultivation" can reduce the cost of production only so far while railroad monopolies dominate the transportation business. He predicts that legislators will "find salvation" by developing "an efficient and regulated network of waterways across the country." Strict government regulation will be necessary "lest the increased use of this means of transportation give rise to monopoly and discrimination" on the railroad model.


Railroads were once expected to make waterways like the Erie Canal obsolete. "Since the advent of the railroads the waterways have been overshadowed to an extent," Roche notes, "but they have always been an important factor in the transportation of the country and their growth will continue.

"Everything that serves us as food, clothing or occupation contains an element of cost transportation. No state or province wholly supplies the wants of its own people. As man's wants increased, the whole world was called upon to furnish his needs and hence the necessity of improving transportation. The cost of living to-day, high as it is, would be still higher if it were not for the development of the facilities of transportation, and it will be less when the facilities are perfected."

The key to perfecting transportation is to prevent monopolies. Increased water transportation will break rail's seeming monopoly on national commerce, Roche expects. Anticipating skeptics, he asks, "How many think of the money of the people that has gone into the stocks and bonds of the great railroad corporations that have been permitted by dishonest means to choke the life out of the waterways?"

Once waterways become a viable alternative to rail, "there will be open a traffic that will leave no room on our markets for the withholding of products that create a demand and raise the values." Roche considers it imperative to "make the fullest use and to take the fullest advantage of the waterways of our nation which Providence has so bountifully given to this people."