During the next decade, or less, Buffalo will astonish the whole world by her industrial growth. The effects of the canal project are already being felt, and manufacturing capital is hurrying to Buffalo as never before. The Federal Government is deepening the Niagara River to a depth of twenty-one feet as far down as North Tonawanda, and this, together with the deepening of the Buffalo River, is opening up a new territory for factory sites, soon to be accessible to the largest ships. Millions of dollars of capital are locating, or planning to locate, here. On the one side is the cheap transportation of the Lakes; on the other will soon be the “man-made river reaching to the sea.” With the joining of these waterways no other city in the United States will be able to compete with Buffalo as a manufacturing centre.

The actual task of digging the new canal for which the people of New York voted one hundred and one million dollars, and which will connect Buffalo with tidewater by a thousand-ton waterway, is now at hand. Few people realise just how stupendous this task is. While every intelligent American is acquainted with the Panama Canal project, few know that this connecting link between the Lakes and the ocean is a greater public improvement for the State of New York to carry out than is the building of the Panama Canal for the United States Government, and it is of hardly less commercial value. Its cost will be greater than that of Suez, and in a short time its tonnage will be more than that of Suez. The first one hundred and twenty-five miles were under contract in January, 1908, with another sixty-five miles ready to be contracted for.

This great waterway, including the Hudson River, will pass from or to and through the city of New York and adjacent cities in New Jersey, Poughkeepsie, Albany, Troy, Schenectady, Utica, Syracuse, Oswego, Rochester, and Buffalo, besides smaller towns, possessing an aggregate population of over six million. The canal when completed will really terminate at Tonawanda, on the Niagara River, the route to Buffalo from there being via the Niagara River, the federal ship canal, and the Erie Basin. While the old canal has a depth of only from seven to nine feet and a width on the bottom of fifty-two, the new waterway will have a uniform depth of twelve feet, with a minimum width at the bottom of seventy-five feet, thus being capable of carrying boats one hundred and fifty feet long, twenty-five feet beam, and with a draft of ten feet. The present capacity of an Erie Canal boat is two hundred and forty tons, while the new boats will carry a thousand tons.

I have shown in preceding articles what a tremendous saving to the people of the United States is made because of Lake transportation, and this will be greatly increased by the new canal. Large aggregations of capital will own not merely Lake vessels, but terminals and canal fleets as well, so that from Lake ports they can name a through freight rate to New York or to foreign countries. Within a few years after its completion, the canal will probably be carrying twenty million tons of freight from Buffalo to the ocean. Taking this figure as a basis, it is easy to figure what a tremendous saving the canal will bring about. It now costs three and a half cents a bushel to send grain from Buffalo to New York. The new canal rate should be not more than a cent a bushel. On twenty million bushels of grain this means a saving of five hundred thousand dollars, which will either go into the pockets of the producer or the consumer or be divided between the two. Freight of all descriptions, manufactured products, and iron and steel, can be transported from Buffalo to tidewater for half of a mill per ton per mile. In other words, on the new canal all kinds of freight can be shipped from Buffalo to New York, a distance of four hundred and forty-six miles, at twenty-two cents per ton. The present cost is eighty-seven cents. On twenty million tons this saving of nearly sixty-five cents a ton would total nearly thirteen million dollars.

What this would mean to Buffalo it is almost impossible to estimate, especially in regard to the steel industry. Buffalo now has an advantage over Pittsburg in the cost of ore, limestone, and several other matters incident to the manufacture of iron and steel, Pittsburg’s sole remaining advantage being its proximity to coking coal. This will be obliterated. A large percentage of the vast steel and allied industries centring at Pittsburg will, of their own volition, move within the boundaries of the State of New York and locate along the Niagara frontier. This industrial migration has already begun. It will continue, naturally, ceaselessly. The ore will meet the coke at Buffalo, and the manufactured product will be floated down the Erie Canal instead of being hauled across the Alleghanies. This is inevitable.

And just as inevitable is the migration of other industries to Buffalo from other cities. Not only does the cheap lake and canal transportation call to them, but also the cheap and unlimited power of Niagara. A few years ago George Westinghouse said: “I expect to live to see the day when a city that will astonish the world will stretch along the entire Niagara frontier – and this city will be Buffalo.” Those who investigate this frontier to-day cannot fail to see the strength of his prediction. Tesla said that Niagara power would revolutionise manufacturing in the United States. It is already revolutionising it in and about Buffalo, and the power of the world’s greatest fall has only been tapped. On the American side the Niagara Falls Power Company is developing one hundred and five thousand horse-power, and the Niagara Falls Hydraulic Power and Manufacturing Company fifty thousand, while on the Canadian side the Canadian Niagara Falls Company is developing fifty thousand horse-power and the Electrical Development Company and the Ontario Power Company sixty-two thousand each. Less than four per cent. of the total flow of water over Niagara Falls has been diverted by the companies now in operation. The total fall of water is theoretically capable of producing over seven million horse-power, which would run virtually all of the manufacturing plants in the United States.

At the present time about seventy-five thousand electrical horse-power is consumed in Buffalo by manufacturing and mercantile establishments. What this cheap power means to the city can best be shown in figures. In nearly all cities the power required for manufacturing purposes is derived from steam produced from coal. In its simplest form this method of generating power requires apparatus consisting of steam boilers with their settings, pumps, steam-pipings, flues and stack, facilities for coal-storage, engines, foundations, and beltings – demanding altogether a large amount of floor-space. The cost of an installation of such equipment has been found to be approximately fifty dollars per rated horse-power. Electric motors using Niagara power can be installed for less than thirty dollars per rated horse-power. In other words, the saving in power to the manufacturer is almost one half. On the other hand, a steam plant requires a considerable force of men to operate and maintain it, while electrical power cuts down this service two thirds.

Why manufacturers are flocking to Buffalo, and why the greatest manufacturing city in the world is bound to extend along the Niagara frontier, is graphically shown by the following figures comparing the cost of Buffalo power with that of other representative cities. Assuming the maximum power used to be one hundred horse-power, the number of working hours a day to be ten, and the “load factor,” or average power actually used, to be seventy-five per cent. of the total one hundred, the cost per month in the cities named is about as follows:

These figures show that the manufacturer on the Niagara frontier not only possesses the cheapest water-power in the country, but that his power costs him less than half as much as it cost his next nearest rival, the manufacturer at Pittsburg. While power costs his Boston competitor a hundred and fifty dollars per horse-power per year, the Buffalo manufacturer pays less than thirty dollars. Even without cheap transportation rates, this item alone would give him an overwhelming advantage in the race for trade.

Destined to be one of the greatest if not the greatest manufacturing city on earth, Buffalo is also one of the most beautiful. To-day she possesses four hundred miles of asphalt pavement – more smooth pavement than is found in Paris, Washington, or any other city. She is the greatest “home city” in America. Out of a population of more than four hundred thousand people, the home-owning population is only thirty thousand below the total registered vote. As a convention city she has only one rival, and that is Detroit. Nature has showered blessings upon her without stint. And I confidently believe that many of the young men and women of Buffalo will live to see the day when one city will stretch along the entire Niagara frontier, with a population exceeded by that of only one or at most two other American cities.

VII
A Trip on a Great Lakes Freighter

In my previous chapters I have described nearly every phase of Lake shipping, with the exception of one, which, while not being vitally concerned with the story of our fresh-water marine, is still one of the most interesting, and perhaps the least known of all. That is the “inner life” of one of our Great Lakes freighters; the life of the crew and the favoured few who are privileged to travel as passenger guests of the owners upon one of these steel monsters of the Inland Seas. In more than one way our Lake marine is unusual; in this it is unique.

Recently one of the finest steel yachts that ever sailed fresh water came up the St. Lawrence to the Lakes. Its owner was a millionaire many times over. With his wife he had cruised around the world, but for the first time they had come to the Lakes. I had the fortune to converse with him upon his yacht about the craft of other countries, and as we lay at anchor in the Detroit River there passed us the greatest ship on the Inland Seas – the Thomas F. Cole; and, addressing his wife, I asked, “How would you like to take a cruise on a vessel like that?”

The lady laughed, as if such a suggestion were amusing indeed, and said that if she were a man she might attempt it, and perhaps enjoy it to a degree, and when I went on to describe some of the things that I knew about “those great, ugly ships,” as she called them, I am quite sure that all of my words were not received without doubt. This little experience was the last of many that proved to me the assertion I have made before – that to nine people out of ten, at least, our huge, silent, red ships that bring down the wealth of the North are a mystery. They are not beautiful. Freighted low down, their steel sides scraped and marred like the hands of a labourer, their huge funnels emitting clouds of bituminous smoke, their barren steel decks glaring in the heat of the summer sun, there seems to be but little about them to attract the pleasure seeker. From the distance at which they are usually seen their aft and forward cabins appear like coops, their pilot houses even less.

Yet fortunate is the person who has the “pull” to secure passage on one of these monster carriers of the Lakes, for behind all of that uninviting exterior there is a luxury of marine travel that is equalled nowhere else in the world except on the largest and finest of private yachts. These leviathans of the Lakes, that bring down dirty ore and take up dirtier coal, are the greatest money-makers in the world, and they are owned by men of wealth. The people who travel on them are the owner’s guests. Nothing is too good for them. Each year the rivalry between builders is increasing as to whose ships shall possess the finest “guests’ quarters.” Behind the smoke and dirt and unseemly red steel that are seen from shore or deck, a fortune has been spent in those rooms over the small doors of which one reads the word “Owners.” You may climb up the steel side of the ship, you may explore it from stem to stern, but not until you are a “guest” – not until the “key to the ship” has been handed to you, are its luxuries, its magnificence, its mysteries, clearly revealed.

My telegram read:

“Take my private room on the Harry Berwind at Ashtabula.”

It was signed by G. Ashley Tomlinson, of Duluth. The Berwind is one of the finest of Tomlinson’s sixteen steel ships and is named after one of the best known fuel transportation men on the Lakes – a vessel that can carry eleven thousand tons without special crowding and makes twelve miles an hour while she is doing it. I reached the great ore and coal docks at Ashtabula at a happy moment.

The other guests had arrived, seven in all – four ladies and three gentlemen, and we met on the red and black dock, with mountains of ore and coal about us, with the thundering din of working machines in our ears, and out there before us, enshrouded in smoke and black dust, the great ship that was to carry us for nearly a thousand miles up the Lakes and back again. It was a happy moment, I say, for I met the seven guests in this wilderness of din and dirt —and six of them had never been aboard a freighter in their lives. They had heard, of course, what lay beyond those red steel walls. But was there not a mistake here? Was it possible —

Doubt filled their faces. High above them towered the straight wall of the ship with a narrow ladder reaching down to them. At the huge coal derricks whole cars of coal were being lifted up as if they were no more than scuttles in the hands of a strong man and their contents sent thundering into the gaping hatches; black dust clouded the air, settling in a thousand minute particles on fabric and flesh; black-faced men shouted and worked at the loading machine; the crash of shunting cars came interminably from the yards; and upon it all the sun beat fiercely, and the air that entered our nostrils seemed thick – thick with the dust and grime and heat of it all. A black-faced, sweating man, who was the mate, leaned over the steel side high above us and motioned us aft, and the seven guests hurried through the thickness of the air, the ladies shuddering and cringing as the cars of coal thundered high over their heads, until they came to the big after port with a plank laid to the dock. Up this they filed, their faces betraying more doubt, more uneasiness, more discomfort as hot blasts of furnace air surged against them; then up a narrow iron stair, through a door – and out there before them lay the ship, her thirty hatches yawning like caverns, and everywhere coal – and coal dust. The ladies gasped and drew their dresses tightly about them as they were guided along the narrow promenade between the edge of the ship and the open hatches, and at last they were halted before one of those doors labelled “Owners.”

Then the change! It came so suddenly that it fairly took the breath away from those who had never been on a freighter before. The guests filed through that narrow door into a great room, which a second glance showed them to be a parlour. Their feet sank in the noiseless depths of rich velvet carpet; into their heated faces came the refreshing breaths of electric fans; great upholstered chairs opened to them welcomingly; the lustre of mahogany met their eyes, and magazines and books and papers were ready for them in profusion. To us there now came the thunder of the coal as if from afar; here was restfulness and quiet – through the windows we could see the dust and smoke and heat hovering about the ship like a pall.

This was the general parlour into which we had been ushered; and now I hung close behind the ship’s guests, watching and enjoying the amazement that continued to grow in them. From each side of the parlour there led a narrow hall and on each side of each hall there was a large room – the guest-chambers – and at the end of each hall there was a bathroom; and in the bedrooms, with their brass beds, their rich tapestries and curtains, our feet still sank in velvet carpet, our eyes rested upon richly cushioned chairs – everywhere there was the luxury and wealth of appointment that a millionaire had planned for the favoured few whom he called his guests.

Now I retired from the guest-chambers to my own private room. I am going a good deal into detail in this description of the guests’ quarters of a great freighter like the Berwind, for I remember once being told by a shipbuilder of the Clyde that he “could hardly believe that such a thing existed,” and I know there are millions of others who have the same doubts. The forward superstructure of a Great Lakes freighter might be compared to a two-story house, with the pilot-house still on top of that; and from the luxurious quarters of the “first story,” which in the Berwind are on a level with the deck of the vessel, a velvet-carpeted stair led to the “observation room” – a great, richly furnished room with many windows in it, from which one may look out upon the sea in all directions except behind. And from this room one door led into the Captain’s quarters, and another into the private suite of rooms which I was fortunate enough to occupy on this trip. The finest hotel in the land could not have afforded finer conveniences than this black and red ship, smothered in the loading of ten thousand tons of coal. In the cool seclusion of its passenger quarters a unique water-works system gave hot and cold water to every room; an electric light plant aft gave constant light, and power for the fans. Nothing was wanting, even to a library and music, to make of the interior of this forward part of the ship a palace fit for the travel of a king. Within a few minutes we had all plunged into baths; hardly were we out and dressed when the steward came with glasses of iced lemonade; and even as the black clouds of grime and dirt still continued to settle over the ship we gathered in the great observation room, a happy party of us now, and the music of mandolin and phonograph softened the sounds of labour that rumbled to us from outside.

Then, suddenly, there fell a quiet. The ship was loaded. Loud voices rose in rapid command, the donkey-engines rumbled and jerked as their cables dragged the steel hatch-covers into place, and the freighter’s whistle echoed in long, sonorous blasts in its call for a tug. And then, from half a mile away, came the shrieking reply of one of those little black giants, and up out of the early sunset gloom of evening it raced in the maelstrom of its own furious speed, and placed itself ahead of us, for all the world like a tiny ant tugging away at a prey a hundred times its size. Lights sprung up in a thousand places along shore, and soon, far away, appeared the blazing eye of the harbour light, and beyond that stretched the vast opaqueness of the “thousand-mile highway” that led to Duluth and the realms of the iron barons of the North. Once clear, and with the sea before us, the tug dropped away, a shudder passed through the great ship as her engines began to work, our whistle gave vent to two or three joyous, triumphant cheers, and our journey had begun.

It was then that our steward’s pretty little wife, Mrs. Brooks, appeared, smiling, cool, delightfully welcome, and announced that dinner was ready, and that this time we must pardon them for being late. Out upon the steel decks men were already flushing off with huge lengths of hose, the ship’s lights were burning brilliantly, and from far aft, nearly a tenth of a mile away, there came the happy voice of a deckhand singing in the contentment of a full stomach and the beautiful freshness of the night. Not more than a dozen paces from our own quarters was a narrow deckhouse which ran the full length of the hatches – the guests’ private dining-room. It was now ablaze with light, and here another and even greater surprise was in store for those of our party who were strangers to the hospitality which one receives aboard a Great Lakes freighter. The long table, running nearly the length of the room, glittered with silver, and was decorated with fruits and huge vases of fresh flowers, and at the head of the table stood the steward’s wife, all smiles and dimples and good cheer, appointing us to our seats as we came in. On these great ore and grain and coal carriers of the Inland Seas, the stewards and their wives, unlike those in most other places, possess responsibilities other than those of preparing and serving food. They are, in a way, the host and hostess of the guests, and must make them comfortable – and “at home.” On a few vessels, like the Berwind, there are both forward and aft stewards, with their assistants, who in many instances are their wives. The forward steward, like our Mr. Brooks, is the chief, and buys for the whole ship and watches that the aft steward does his work properly. Outside of this he devotes himself entirely to the vessel’s guests, and is paid about one hundred dollars a month and all expenses, while his wife gets thirty dollars for doing it. So he must be good. The stewards of Lake freighters are usually those who have “graduated” ashore, for even the crews of the Lakes are the best fed people in the world. Mr. Brooks, for instance, had not only won his reputation in some of the best hotels in the land, but his books on cooking are widely known, and especially along the fresh-water highways. I mention these facts because they show another of the little known and unusual phases of life in our Lake marine. For breakfast, dinner, and supper the tables in the crew’s mess-room are loaded with good things; very few hotels give the service that is found in the passengers’ dining-room.

Thus, from the very beginning, one meets with the unusual and the surprising on board one of these big steel ships of the Lakes. While towns and cities and the ten thousand vessels of the seas are sweeping past, while for a thousand miles the scenes are constantly changing – from thickly populated country to virgin wilderness, from the heat of summer on Erie to the chill of autumn on Superior, – the vessel itself remains a wonderland to the one who has never taken the trip before. From the huge refrigerator, packed with the choicest meats, with gallons of olives and relishes, baskets of fruits and vegetables – from this to the deep “under-water dungeons” where the furnaces roar night and day and where black and sweating men work like demons, something new of interest is always being found.

For the first day, while the steel decks are being scrubbed so clean that one might lie upon them without soiling himself, the passengers may spend every hour in exploring the mysteries of the ship without finding a dull moment. Under the aft deck-houses, where the crew eat and sleep, are what the sailors call the “bowels of the ship,” and here, as is not the case on ocean craft, the passenger may see for the first time in his life the wonderful, almost appalling, mechanism that drives a great ship from port to port, for it must be remembered that the “passenger” here is a guest – the guest of the owner whose great private yacht the great ship is, in a way, and everything of interest will be shown to him if he wishes. Of the bottom of this part of the ship the “brussels-carpet guest” – as sailors call the passenger who is taking a trip on a freighter for the first time – stands half in terror. There is the dim light of electricity down here, the roaring of the furnaces, the creaking and groaning of the great ship, and high above one’s head, an interminable distance away it seems, one may see where day begins. Everywhere there is the rumbling and crashing of machinery, the dizzy whirling of wheels, the ceaseless pumping of steel arms as big around as trees; and up and up and all around there wind narrow stairways and gratings, on which men creep and climb to guard this heart action of the ship’s life. The din is fearful, the heat in the furnace-room insufferable, and when once each half-minute a furnace door is opened for fresh fuel, and writhing torrents of fire and light illumine the gloomy depths, the tenderfoot passenger looks up nervously to where his eyes catch glimpses of light and freedom far above him. And then, in the explanation of all this – in the reason for these hundreds of tons of whirling, crashing, thundering steel – there comes the greatest surprise of all. For all of this giant mechanism is to perform just one thing – and that is to whirl and whirl and whirl an insignificant-looking steel rod, which is called a shaft, and at the end of which, in the sea behind the ship, is the screw – a thing so small that one stands in amazement, half doubting that this is the instrument which sends a ten-thousand-ton ship and ten thousand tons of cargo through the sea at twelve miles an hour!

After this first day of exploration, the real joyous life of the ship comes to one. Every hour of every day is one of pleasure. You are on the only ship in the world into every corner of which a passenger is allowed to go. You are, in so far as your pleasure and freedom go, practically the owner of the ship. The crew and even the captain may not know but what you are one of the owners, for nothing but your name is given to the officers before you come aboard. Of course, the steward has the privilege to tell you to keep out of his kitchen, and the captain for you to keep out of the pilot-house – but they never do it. That guest, for instance, who haunts the pilot-house almost from morning to night, who insists upon taking lessons in steering, and who on any other craft in the world would soon be told to remain in his cabin or mind his business, may be a millionaire himself – a millionaire who is giving this line of ships many thousands of dollars’ worth of freight each year. So the captain and the crew must be affable. But, as I have said before, this is accepted as a pleasure and not as a duty on the Inland Seas. I have taken trips on a score of vessels, and it means much when I say that never have I encountered an unpleasant captain, and that only once did I meet with a mate who was not pleasant to his passengers.

So, from the first day out, the big steel ship is an “open house” to its guests. Forward and aft of the cabins, great awnings are stretched, thick rugs and carpets are spread upon the deck, and easy chairs are scattered about. The captain and his mates are ready with the answers to a thousand questions. They point out objects and locations of interest as they are passed. There, in the late storms of last autumn, a ship went down with all on board; on yonder barren coast, five or six miles away, the captain guides your glasses to the skeleton of a ship, whose tragic story he tells you; he names the lighthouses, the points of coasts, and tells you about the scores of ships you pass each day. He shows you how the wonderful mechanism of the ship is run from the pilot-house, and he gives you lessons in the points of the compass, and perhaps lets you try your hand at the wheel. And each hour, if you have been abroad, you see more and more how an ocean trip cannot be compared to this. In a preceding chapter I have described what you see and what you pass in this thousand-mile journey to Duluth; how you slip from summer to autumn, from the heart of the nation’s population to vast, silent wildernesses where the bear and the wolf roam unmolested; how great cities give place to mining and lumber camps, and you come into the great northern lake where darkness does not settle until after nine o’clock at night.

But these are not the only things which make a trip on a Great Lakes freighter interesting. It is what you can do. There are a dozen games you can play, from hatch-bag to shuffle-board; there is music and reading, eating and drinking – for the steward is constantly alive to your wants, always alive to add to your pleasures. And there is excitement – if not of one kind then of another. You may be thrilled by the sudden alarm of fire aboard ship, and find yourself burning with relief when you discover that you are witnessing nothing but an exciting fire drill; it may be a wrestling or boxing match between two of the ship’s champions, a race over the steel hatches, or – something like the following incident:

One of the greatest sources of entertainment for guests aboard a Lake freighter is in the study of the men and boys of the crew, for the average crew of twenty-five or thirty always possesses some odd characters. Our party was very much amused by one individual, a youth of about twenty, large, round-faced, full-fed, a young man of unbounded good humour whose two great joys in life were his meals – and sleep. This youth never lost an opportunity to take a nap. After his dinner in the mess-room, he would promptly fall into a doze in his chair, to be aroused by a dash of cold water or some other practical joker’s trick; if he sat down on a hatch he would sleep; he would fall asleep leaning against the cabin. His actions caused no little uneasiness on the part of the captain, who liked the boy immensely. “Some day he will fall asleep and topple overboard,” he said.

We had come into Superior, where the clear, dry air exerts a peculiar effect upon one. Coming suddenly from the warm atmosphere of the Lower Lakes a person has difficulty in keeping his eyes open half of the time up there. We were off Keweenaw Point when the thrilling alarm was spread that “Dopey,” the sleepy youth, had fallen overboard. The aft steward brought the news forward. Billy had eaten a huge dinner and was taking a comfortable siesta standing, half leaning over the aft rail. A moment after passing him the steward returned, bent upon stirring the boy from his dangerous position, and found him gone. The vessel was searched from stem to stern. Even the passengers joined in the hunt. But there was found no sign of the missing youth, and a deep gloom fell upon the people of the ship. An hour later, one of the young ladies approached the steep, narrow stair that led down into the forward locker. The mate himself had searched this gloomy nook for Billy. I was a dozen feet behind the girl and she turned to me with a white, startled face.