of the canals, which differed very much from my information upon that point. I would like to ask you a question about it. I understood you to state that the capacity of the Erie Canal was about 11,000,000 per annum?

A. Yes, sir; it is estimated that there are about 7,000 boats, with an average tonnage of 250 tons, each making one round trip in 30 days, for 200 days.

Q. Is that not on all canals of New York?

A. That would be on all the canals of New York. Outside of the Erie Canal there is very little, if you recollect. And while there was no apparent increase in the canal capacity itself, there is nearly a double capacity owing to the smaller size boats having passed out of existence and larger size boats having taken their place. The capacity, as you will observe, is doubled in the size of the boats with the same number of boats. Q. We have a report made some two or three years ago to the New York State Convention, in which they estimate the ultimate capacity of the Erie Canal at ninety boats each way per day, which amounts to a little over 4,000,000 of tons per annum as its capacity for moving eastward-bound freight. I called your attention to that to know how the difference of opinion arose.

A. It takes just as long to lock a boat through to carry seventy-five tons as one carrying two hundred and fifty tons, provided the lock capacity is suitable for it, so that the same number of boats as I have explained to you, passing in the same time, would take twice as much property as they would at that time, owing to the difference in the size of the boats.

Q. This estimate was placed upon boats of 210 tons, which seems to be the practical capacity; multiplied by 90 for 220 days, gave 4,000,000 tons, according to iny recollection.

A. But you take ninety boats for that length of time per day, and you will see that there are a great many more boats than that.

Q. There may be more boats on the various canals, but ninety boats they estimate as the capacity for passing a single lock in a day.

A. But you understand that the locks are double and can be increased in size.

Q. But they say that ninety boats are all that can pass either way, for the ultimate capacity one hundred, and they estimate the practical capacity at ninety.

A. That is a mistake, because during the busy season, unless they did more than that, they never would carry the tons they have already done. That would disprove them at once.

Q. I understood you to say that the capacity of all the roads moving freight eastward would be about 30,000 tons a day?

A. Moving to the sea-board at the different points.

Q. What roads do you include in that estimate?

A. Roads passing to New Orleans, and to Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Portland, and Montreal.

Q. Then you include all the roads leading in any direction from the interior to the sea-board?

A. Yes, sir, from the grain-producing country.

Q. Thirty thousand tons per day is the ultimate capacity, is it?

A. Yes, sir. The southern roads do not reach our grain-producing country.

Q. What is your judgment as to the relative economy of water and raii transportation, taking the existing water-lines; I mean the Erie

Canal, and the lakes, and the leading railroads to the East? Which can carry cheapest, and how much? In other words, can you compete with water!

A. We perhaps cannot compete with them where the property has to be moved in very large quantities.

Q. I mean fourth-class heavy freight, such as grain?

A. For such articles as corn and grain, which has to be moved in quantities of eight or ten thousand bushels at a time to one consignee, it would be cheaper for him probably to move that property by water, if it was going to a point that could be reached by water; but the necessity of the business is such that each to come from the producer to the consumer, they do not require it in such quantities. Therefore he,

in order to do his business upon a small capital and receive his car at the place of production, or near it, and send it to the place of consump tion, can do that on a very small capital, as compared with the amount that he would have to pay in taking large quantities and sending it into store and letting it accumulate there until he gets a quantity sufficient for a vessel-load. The interest of his money is going on, and his insurance and storage are going on; and then his water-communication, while it is cheaper than rail, to a certain extent in these large quantities, when he gets it to his destination, there is the elevator charging again, and his insurance upon a large quantity, and the prospect or chance of a fall in the market. All that makes it larger in the end if he requires this property for consumption, and only requires a certain quantity a day. He makes money in the end by sending it by rail in quantities as he wants to consume it, more than he would to send in those large quantities, with the accumulation of charges, interest, and that sort of thing upon it, and receiving it and holding it in large quantities until be consumes it.

Q. Looking to the general consideration of the great cereal crops of the West, and assuming the improved water-lines, so that vessels, say, carrying 750 tons, might pass through the Erie or Oswego Canal, or by Lake Champlain, do you think it possible for railroads to be improved in any way so that they could compete with them in economy?

A. I do not, sir; not where it has to be moved in those large quantities for foreign shipment, but for consumption they can.

Q. By how much would you fail to compete with them in the actual carrying charges, leaving out the question of time and other considerations that you mention?

A. The rail ought to get at least 25 per cent. more.

Q. How do you bring your wheat, corn, and other grains from Albany to New York and pass over the New York Central Railroad; how is it brought from Albany?

A. It is brought from Athens in barges.

Q. Where is that point?

A. It is a point on the river below Albany.

Q. Why do you unload your cars there instead of carrying them through to New York?

A. To get the additional facilities for handling the cars that we cannot handle in New York.

Q. Is it not also because it is cheaper to take the water wherever you strike it?

A. That may be one consideration. I do not know as to that.

By Mr. CONKLING:

Q. Do they use the cut-off now which connected it with Athens?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Explain that to the committee, if you please.

A. As I said before, with regard to the difficulties of terminal points, handling large quantities of cars in a given time in a place like New York, the impossibility of doing that upon so limited a space of ground as they would have to, and property then having to go into a barge here after you had gone through with the difficulties of handling it here, are brought down to Athens, where they can handle it with these increased facilities; it goes into a barge and comes from there down here, and is delivered perhaps within a very short time.

Q. Brought down to Athens by Albany or Greenbush, or directly from Schenectady to Athens?

A. From Schnectady to Athens.

Q. By a cut-off?

A. Yes, sir; by a cut-off. There is a cut-off at Schenectady.

By Mr. DAVIS:

Q. I see you are familiar with the moving of trains. I was unable to agree with your conclusions with Mr. Conkling, and I wondered whether you had had actual charge of the running of trains on a road.

A. I have had charge of the running of trains.

Q. How long since?

A. I had charge of the Michigan Central Road in 1865.

Q. The running and moving of trains came under your supervision? A. Yes, sir; and three years before that I moved trains on other roads.

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Davis says that the trains on the Baltimore and Ohio Road are discharged sometimes, and very often, as frequently as once in five minutes.

Mr. DAVIS. Convoys are run five minutes apart.

Mr. HAYES. You do not mean that they discharge their freight and move off in five minutes?

Mr. DAVIS. I mean that convoys of trains, say of ten trains, pass a given point within an hour, and that they receive them in that way at the ends of their roads, and start them in that way.

Mr. HAYES. Yes, but they are not kept that way while they are on the road.

Mr. DAVIS. Certainly, convoys every five minutes are allowed to run. Mr. SHERMAN. They are coal-trains.

Mr. DAVIS. They are all, except passenger-trains.

Mr. HAYES. I would not want to be engineer or brakeman on a road of that kind.

Mr. DAVIS. Why not?

Mr. HAYES. Simply because in case of an accident other trains come into you. It is utterly impossible to flag trains and prevent an accident where the trains run within five minutes of each other.

Mr. DAVIS. Some very good railroad-men differ with you on thatsome men who have been successful in managing roads.

Mr. HAYES. But you would have to send a flag back some three hundred yards.

Mr. DAVIS. That depends altogether on circumstances, sir. Sometimes one hundred yards, and sometimes none if you have a tangent.

If you have an up-grade you are running in sight of one another, and it makes no difference. If you have a down-grade, of course you are right. By the regulations of some roads managed pretty well in cou

voys, they are allowed to go within five minutes of each other; and they run them in that way by turn-outs, formed in the shape of a Y, at the ends of the road. At Lukes Point I suppose they receive ten trains within an hour frequently.

Mr. HAYES. But they do not receive ten trains the next hour.

Mr. DAVIS. But there is no reason they could not if they had sufficient turn-outs.

Mr. HAYES. What would they do with the property?

Mr. DAVIS. They unload it. They could have a hundred turn-outs if they wanted it, as well as two, if they had the ground. But supposing that we approach a point within a mile or five miles of our terminus, and there we had ten or twenty turn-outs-one for live stock, one for graiu, and another for coal, and so on. The cars come there regulated. The switchmen turn them on either track. To a great extent they are sorted before they arrive there. For instance, grain may come on one turn-out or switch, and a coal-train on to another. Some of them have coal-convoys and some of them have miscellaneous ones. Now, half an hour for each train would limit a double road to a very small capacity in a day. Under your rule but forty-eight trains could be received a day, and that would be very small.

Mr. HAYES. But suppose, for instance, you have twelve trains, one every five minutes. Suppose you had just capacity for those twelve trains. You have twelve turn-outs. They must be all for the very same grade of property, and they must go to the discharging point for that property without any switching at all. When they get to that point can they discharge those twelve trains and let twelve more in within the next hour to discharge, and do it through the twenty-four hours? Mr. DAVIS. If necessary they could have a hundred turn-outs at the end of the road.

Mr. HAYES. Suppose you had a thousand. If you have one car in that train not of the same grade, and going to the same place to unload, you cannot switch that car out in five minutes.

Mr. DAVIS. If you, as a railroad-man, say you cannot switch a car in five minutes, then, of course, we are so far apart it is hardly worth while to pursue the matter.

Mr. HAYES. But, taking the ordinary way-train, if you have the train ready, and car ready to switch, and know where it is to go, and cut it off, switching it at the right point, you can do it within five minutes. But you cannot take a train, and find a car in it that has to come out, and to find where that car has to go, and put it on a side-track. If you do it in five minutes you have got smarter railroad men than generally run freight-trains.

By Mr. NORWOOD:

Q. I understood one of your deductions to be that the tonnage capacity by rail and water is far in excess of the products?

A. If evenly distributed over the time.

Q. I understand that is, if the freight was sent regularly, so that you could be constantly employed through the time?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. What do you consider the excess would be?

A. I think we could move twice as much as is now being moved, if we had it to move in a uniform manner, with proper facilities at terminal points for each kind of freight.

Q. If you were regularly employed all the time?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. In making that estimate, what roads do you include? You stated a while ago, I think, in answer to a question put by Senator Windom, that you only included roads that reached the Atlantic.

A. The Baltimore and Ohio Road and its branches into Baltimore, the roads into Philadelphia, the roads into New York, the roads into Boston, the roads to Montreal and Portland.

Q. You do not go south of the Baltimore and Ohio Road?

A. No, sir; except where you take it down the Mississippi, from the Mississippi to the Missouri Valley down to New Orleans.

Q. Then these roads you have mentioned have a capacity of thirty thousand tous a day?

A. Yes, sir; if it was equally distributed.

Mr. STRICKLAND KNEAS, assistant president of the Pennsylvania Railroad:

GENTLEMEN: For the purpose of facilitating business and giving you all the practical information that you desire, our company has requested its operating officers to come before you, that they may give practical answers to such questions as may be presented, and for that reason our general manager, Mr. Cassalt, and our controller, Mr. Lewis, are now here and will give you all information regarding the operating and general accounts of our road that you may desire. Col. Joseph D. Potts, who has charge of all the outside business connected with the Empire Fast-Freight Line upon our road, and is president of the Empire Line, has also kindly consented to meet you in our behalf so that you may have such answers given to your questions on the part of our company as will fully cover the field of your researches. I would respectfully request that Colonel Potts may be now examined.

The CHAIRMAN:

Colonel Potts will please state his position in the road.

Mr. JOSEPH D. POTTS: I have no official position in connection with the road itself, but I have charge as president of the fast-freight organization known as the Empire Transportation Company, which is an independent fast-freight line operating over the Pennsylvania Railroad, and some of its leased lines, and the various connections of that route.

By Mr. NORWOOD:

Q. Is your position similar to that of Mr. Hayes?

A. Very similar, sir; except that the company which I represent is a company that is known as an independent corporation. It is a private corporation, not connected with the railroad companies except as an agent.

Q. Please state the nature of the connection and the business done through it?

A. The business is very similar; indeed I may say is entirely similar to that described to you by Mr. Hayes, except that instead of the railroad companies owning the cars we use, they agree with us to furnish them. We furnish them and are responsible for them in all respects;