that

some- -Tennessee for example-were proposing to do so. Several of the constituent bodies have passed resolutions similar to those of the Board, and have memorialized their Legislatures respectively, in favor of more liberal measures; and the Council would recommend that they persist in doing this until the grievance complained of shall have been removed. The evil is a local one, and the pressure of local influence must be mainly depended on for its abolition. The associated Boards and Chambers are therefore respectfully and earnestly requested to take this question in hand, wherever these license laws continue on the statute books, and to labor vigorously and perseveringly for their total repeal. In this work they will be sustained by patriotic motives of the highest consideration, no less than by their convictions of its general commercial expediency.

V. THE ENLARGEMENT OF THE ERIE CANAL.

At the Cincinnati Meeting in 1868 the Board adopted a series of resolutions sent up by the Buffalo Board of Trade, recognizing "the great importance of the Erie Canal, and its truly national character as the great highway and channel of inter-communication between the North-Western and the Eastern States ;" and declaring that “it would view the adoption of some settled policy by the Legislature of the State of New York, having for its object the enlargement of this great water highway, thereby cheapening and facilitating the movement of the productions of the country, as an evidence of a wise, liberal and national statesmanship." A year later a somewhat similar series of resolutions was presented, in which the magnitude and value of the traffic of the food producing States, and the dependence of this traffic upon reliable and cheap transportation, were set forth; also the inefficiency of the Erie Canal in its present condition, and the exorbitant character of the tolls exacted by the State of New York; and an urgent appeal was again made to the Government of that State "to adopt all necessary measures for enlarging its capacity, and strengthening and protecting the locks and embankments against interruption to navigation." These resolutions were referred to the Council and received its consideration, but no action seemed expedient at the time, and it was so stated in the last annual report. At Buffalo the question of the enlargement of the Erie Canal came up in a somewhat different form, and resolutions were introduced in which the General Government, in view of the strictly national character of the commerce of the Canal, was requested to take measures in connection with the State of New York for the increase of its tonnage capacity. These resolutions were ably debated, and were then referred to the

Council. The Council gave them its careful attention while in session at Washington, and without reaching any matured conclusion to be submitted to the Board as a recommendation, it placed them upon the programme for the present meeting, and with them a general proposition in the form of a resolution declaring that whenever aid from the National Government is sought for in behalf of a public work lying within the limits of a particular State, all interest in and jurisdiction over such work by the State, together with the right of way and all private ownership, should be abandoned in favor of the Government.

VI. A NATIONAL RAILROAD TO THE PACIFIC.

At the Buffalo Meeting the St. Louis Union Merchants' Exchange submitted a proposition for a memorial to Congress asking for liberal subsidies and other needed legislation to secure the construction of another and more central line of railway to the Pacific coast. As an amendment to this, Mr. BONNER, one of the St. Louis delegates, introduced a resolution recommending the construction of a Pacific railroad, to be built and owned by the General Government, and to be open to the use of individuals or corporate carriers as canals have usually been, and he supported his measure in a very interesting speech. The original resolution and the amendment were referred to the Council; but the principles involved were found to be too important to be decided upon in the time which could be spared for their examination. The Council therefore voted that it could not report intelligently, "in the absence of technical information and practical acquaintance with the details of railroad management as at present carried on." As ordered by the Board, the subject is continued on the programme.

It will be observed that Mr. BONNER's resolution contains two distinct propositions; the first: that the General Government construct and exercise direct control over a line of railroad; the second: that this railroad be open to the use of all carriers. Without expressing an opinion upon either at this time, the Council would quote a few sentences, bearing upon them, from recognized authorities, which may be useful to the delegates in the discussion which is to follow. On the subject of Government ownership and management of a portion of the railway system of a country, the railroad commissioners of Massachusetts in their annual report for 1870, say:

"The commissioners do not propose in this connection to discuss the question of State ownership of railroads. There are arguments, based both upon theory and experience, in favor of it and opposed to it. In this country it has not hitherto been attempted with success; but it is not clear that failure did not arise from the

effort both to construct railroads and to originate a system of operating them; nor, indeed, was failure confined to public enterprises, as it is matter of notoriety that all the early railroad undertakings in private hands passed through long periods of extreme depression and financial tribulation. There are also very grave political considerations involved. The principle upon which our Government is founded,— that of least possible governmental interference and largest possible individual development, has a strong hold upon the popular mind. The public opinion of the Commonwealth unquestionably accepts with great reluctance any measure calculated to bring industrial enterprises within the influence of politics. At the same time a strong and growing popular conviction cannot be ignored, that railroads and internal communication constitute an exception to this general rule. The success which has attended an opposite policy in Belgium, and the experiments now in progress in Great Britain, have by no means escaped notice. There is nothing to prevent private ownership and State ownership of railroads from existing at the same time in the same community." (pp. 60-61.)

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The Commissioners quote from the testimony of M. FASSIAUX, Belgian Director-general of railways and telegraphs, before a British commission, to the effect that on the 1st of January, 1864, there were one thousand two hundred and forty-seven miles of railway in Belgium; of this amount three hundred and forty-seven miles had been constructed and were worked by the State; one hundred and seventeen miles constructed by private companies and worked by the State, were likewise the property of the State, though a proportion of the receipts were paid over to the companies who built the roads, as the remuneration for work done; the remaining seven hundred and eighty miles were both constructed and worked by private companies, free from public control. The report then proceeds:

"The practical operation of the mixed system of ownership thus existing in Belgium might reasonably be expected to somewhat reproduce itself in Massachusetts. Of it M. FASSIAUX said in the examination already referred to the State railways thus (through a mixed ownership,) find themselves placed in constant comparison with the railways worked by private companies; on the one hand stimulating them to general improvements, and on the other hand acting as a sort of check against any attempt to realize extravagant profits at the cost of the public.' These are the identical effects which the commissioners desire to see produced in Massachusetts. Instead, however, of expressing them as something which might be anticipated, they are here quoted as the actual conclusions of a long experience." (pp. 61-62.)

In reference to the common use of railroads by the public, the following extracts from the report of the British Royal Commission of 1867, may be interesting:

"The acts by which the earlier railway companies were established followed very closely, in their general scope, the provisions which had been applied to canal companies. In their capacity of owners of a road, railway companies were not intended by Parliament to have any monopoly or preferential

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use of the means of communication on their lines of railway: on the contrary, provision was made, in all or most of the acts of incorporation, to enable all persons to use the road on payment of certain tolls to the company, under such regulations as the company might make to secure the proper and convenient use of the railway. But no sooner were railways worked on a large scale with locomotive power, than it was found impracticable for the public in general to use the lines either with carriages or with locomotive engines, and the railway companies, in order to make their undertakings remunerative, were compelled, with the assistance of the persons who had been previously engaged in the carrying trade of the country, to embark in the business of common carriers on their lines of railway, and conduct the whole operations themselves." (p. 8.)

Sir ROWLAND HILL, a member of the Commission, in a minority report, makes a similar statement:

"In the outset of the railway system, the Legislature aimed at maintaining the same freedom on the new as on the old roads. For though, in this country, these new roads, being constructed by special companies, were nowise public property, still it was the intention of the Legislature that any one should have a right to use them for the conveyance of goods and passengers, on the payment of appointed tolls, as on common roads or canals, and tables of such tolls may still be found placarded at some of the older stations, the expectation being that competing vehicles would be established here, just as on the old roads.

'It is scarcely necessary to mention that these expectations have not been realized; probably in respect of passenger trains no such attempt was ever made; and even as regards the conveyance of goods, independent action was for the most part limited to a kind of wholesale use of the company's trains by established carriers. This is easily explained by the difficulties and dangers which, as is now well known, must ever attend disjointed proceedings, where arrangements are so complicated and the speed so great. Thus all expectation of benefit to the public from competition on the respective lines has been baffled by the mere force of circumstances. When therefore the Legislature and the public became aware that such competition was impracticable, they gradually laid aside their previous reluctance to the establishment of competing lines, and, on the contrary, began to look to these as the best means of securing reduced rates, accelerated speed and increased convenience."

In the United States also, many of the early railway charters contemplated the use of the tracks by parties other than the corporations, following in their provisions the charters which had been given for turnpikes, and limiting the tolls to be charged. The charters of the Boston and Lowell railroad, granted in 1830, and of the Boston and Providence and Boston and Worcester roads, in 1831, were of this character; but the general public never availed itself of the right thus reserved to it to use the lines in this way.

VII. TRADE RELATIONS WITH CANADA.

At the meeting of the Council in Washington, the condition of the commercial relations of the United States with the Dominion of Canada

came up for consideration, and it was decided to hold a sitting in Boston, and to invite the Dominion Board of Trade to send a delegation thither, to meet the Council in conference. This session took place in June, three gentlemen from Montreal and one from Halifax being in attendance, as representatives of the Dominion merchants. As a result of what took place, it was voted to enter the general subject upon the programme, and to invite the Dominion Board to send delegates to be present at this annual meeting. The Board accepted promptly this invitation, and we have the pleasure of welcoming its honored representatives to seats on this floor to-day. A Committee of the Council was also appointed to correspond and confer with a Committee which was subsequently appointed by the Dominion Board; a conference between the two was to have taken place on the 18th of October, in Chicago, by the kind invitation of the Board of Trade of that city, but was prevented by the dreadful fire of the 8th and 9th of the same month, and it has not been convenient to make a second appointment. The present opportunity however will permit a full interchange of views, and it is to be hoped, will tend to the development of a plan for enabling these two great countries, the Canadian Dominion and the American Union, to enter into and maintain close and mutually profitable relations of intercourse and traffic.

Mr. J. N. LARNED, a special agent appointed by the Secretary of the Treasury under a resolution of Congress, to inquire into the extent and state of the trade of the United States and the several dependencies of Great Britain in North America, opens his report, bearing date the 28th of January, 1871, as follows:

"Between the United States and the British dependencies that lie adjacent to us upon our northern border, the intercourse of trade ought, in the natural order of things, to be as intimate and as extensive as the intercourse that exists within this Union between its States at large and any corresponding group of them. Indeed, the natural intimacy of connection between the Provinces of the Dominion of Canada and our own Northern, North-western and Eastern States, is such as exists between very few of the geographical sections of the Union. Through more than half the length of the coterminous line of the two territories, the very boundary of political separation is itself a great natural highroad of commercial intercommunication-the most majestic and the most useful of all the grand water-ways of traffic and travel with which nature has furnished the American Continent. The lakes on which we border at the north link us with, rather than divide us from, the foreign border on their opposite shores; while the fact that the great river through which their waters escape to the sea diverges, at last, into that neighboring domain, only adds to the closeness of the relationship in which the two countries are placed. The territory of the Canadian peninsula between the lakes is thrust like a wedge into the territory of the United States. Across it lies the short cut of traffic and travel between our North-western and our Eastern States.