Excerpt from A Traffic History of the Mississippi River System For the period after 1860, the authorities already quoted have been drawrrupon. In addition to these sources, annual reports of the chambers of commerce and, similar commercial organizations of the principal river cities have been available, including the reports of commercial bodies in Cincinnati, Pittsburg, Louisville, Kansas City, New Orleans, St. Paul, and St. Louis. In addition there are the official publications of the United States Government, which have been very rrruclr more satisfactory in recent years, some of which have devoted considerable attention to water traffic: The collection of statistics of traffic on internal waterways, so far as it was authorized by congressional statute began with the river and harbor bills of 1866 and 1867, which required the Secretary of War to report on various works and to state the amount of corn merce and navigation which would be benefited by the expenditures. This legalized a long-standing practice. Under which the Corps of Engineers reported the commercial statistics in the manner already described. On May 3, 1875, an act was passed which provided for an annual report by the Bureau of Statistics of the actual cost of transporting freight and passengers on the railroads and on the canals, rivers, and other navigable waters of the United States, the charges imposed for such transportation of freight' and passengers, and the tonnage. Transported. A Bureau of Internal Commerce was set up in the 'l'reasur3f Department. And the first report was issued in 1876 as Part. II ol'.tl1ea1111u11 Report on (omrrrerce and Navigation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.