“Nearly all the products of Kentucky have their prices determined by the cost of transportation to the great centres of population along the Atlantic seaboard, or beyond the sea.  Its tobacco, pork, grain, and some of the costlier woods, with other products, find their principal markets in Europe, while cattle, and to a certain extent the other agricultural products of the state, have their values determined by the cost of transportation to the American Atlantic markets.  Hitherto this access to the domestic and foreign markets of the Atlantic shores has been had by way of the railway systems which traverse the region north of Kentucky, and from which the state has been divided by opposing interests and the physical barrier of the Ohio River.  All the development of the state has taken place under these disadvantages.

“A comparison of the tables of cost, given below, will show that the complete opening of the mouth of the Mississippi to ocean ships will result in the enfranchisement of the productions of Kentucky in an extraordinary way.  They are taken from published freight rates, and give time and cost of transit from St. Paul, on the Mississippi, about two thousand miles from New Orleans, to Liverpool by the two routes:  one being by rail, lake, canal, and ocean; the other by river and ocean: 

Cost per
bushel.  Time. 
Cents.  Days.

From St. Paul to Chicago (by rail),. 18 4 do.  Chicago to Buffalo (by lake), 8 6 do.  Buffalo to New York (by canal),. 14 24 do.  N. York to Liverpool (by ocean), 16 12
Elevator, or transshipment charges: 
 Chicago . . . . . 2 2
 Buffalo . . . . . 2 2
 New York, . . . . . . . . . 4 2
                                              ____ __
Total, . . . . . . 64 52

Cost per
bushel.  Time. 
Cents.  Days.

From St. Paul to New Orleans (via
  river), 1993 miles 18 10 do.  New Orleans to Liverpool, . . 20 20
Elevator charges, New Orleans, 2 1
                                              ___ __
Total 40 31

“Here is a saving by direct trade of twenty-four cents per bushel, or eight shillings per quarter, and a saving of twenty-one days in time.  To be fair, I have taken the extreme point; but the nearer the grain is to the Gulf, the cheaper the transportation.  At the present time the freight rates from the lower Ohio to Liverpool would permit the profitable shipment of the canal coal, and native woods of different species, to Europe with one transshipment at New Orleans.”