Erie Canal Improvement

To raise the eanals to their ola com mercial rank two thing3 ara proposec Oae is to makethe Erie canal through out a strip canal, a eostly undertaking and one that might prove the revers of beneöcial either to Xew York or t the cities along the lines of the canal as the actual beneflt of the chang would fall rather to the producers an shippers of the far west than to th people of New York. Another and more reasonable propo sition is to increase the carrying capa city of the canal by improving the ex isting lock g&tes. The old fashionec s'ow moving swinging gatts are stil used. By a change to lift gdtea, wlnc could be done without great expense the available length of thelocks wouk be increased by 35 f eet, and the cana boats might be made 130 feet long in stead of 97 feet as now, with a propor tional inerease in their carrying capa city, or from eight thousand to ten o eleven thousand bnshels of wheat. Th cost of operating the larger boats would be little, if any, greater than f r th boats now in use. With improved loc gates, it is further claimed, the carry ing capacity of the canal might be üv times what it ever bas been. Touching the proposition to abandoi the canals entirely as having outlived their period of economical usefulness itis urged that water carriageremains and is likely always to remain an im portant commercial factor, even wLer railroads are most abundantly d.,velop ed. Proof of this is seen in the larg use of the great canals of England anc Scotland, and in the efforts which th more advaneed European states ar making to extend their facilities for water earriage. Thus ia France 74 per ent. of the domestic commerce of the ountry goes over the canals.and efforts re making to largely increase the caacity of such artificial water-ways. rermany, likewise, has entered upon lie work of enlarging and improving iie 2,000 mile3 of canals within the units of the empire, and Holland and ther states are spending large sums 'or a like purpose.