Communication is carried on by means of these and also by telegraphs, telephones and postal service. The waterways consist of the seas, rivers, lakes and canals. The last three offer 100,000 miles of inland navigation. The 38 principal canals used for commercial purposes extend nearly 2,500 miles. The Missouri-Mississippi system and the Great Lakes are the most important means of internal transportation by water. (See Canals, Great Lakes and articles on rivers and states.)
American shipping in 1911 comprised 12,684 sailing vessels (including canal-boats and barges) and 13,307 steamships (q. v.), the tonnage of both classes aggregating 7,638,790 tons. The foreign commerce is, nine tenths of it, carried in foreign ships. The Atlantic and Gulf shipping is two thirds of the total American shipping and half of the tonnage. That of the lakes is an eighth of the number and a third of the tonnage. (See Shipbuilding.) The tonnage engaged in fisheries numbers 54,982 tons; in foreign trade only 863,495 tons; but in coastal trade 6,720,313 tons. The Atlantic ports had two-thirds of the shipping that entered and cleared.
The railways of the continental United States date from 1826, and in 1910 their total mileage was 240,438 miles, nearly half of the world's railway mileage and much more than that of Europe. As Britain is the island of ships, so the United States is the continent of railways. They penetrate every state and territory, even Alaska, Panama, Porto Rico and the Philippines; employ 1,699,420 men, whose wages in 1910 were $1,143,725,000; and in 1910 they carried 971,683,199 passengers and 1,849,900,000 tons of freight. Their passenger-cars would make a train over 500 miles long, their freight-cars and engines another of nearly 10,000 miles length. There are about 1,000 companies operating them. (See Harriman, Hill, Morgan and Railroads.) The United States systems also interlink with the Mexican and Canadian systems, American trains running from St. Louis into the City of Mexico, the Canadian Pacific crossing Maine and the Grand Trunk entering Portland and Chicago. In 1910 there were 40,088 miles of street and elevated roads operated by electricity and a few hundred miles operated by other power, and in densely peopled regions they are girdling the country with a network of interurban lines. (See Electric Railway.) Wagon-roads, except in a few sections of the east, are inferior to those of Europe.
The telegraph and the telephone in the United States are private enterprises. In 1911 one company had 1,487,345 miles of wire and 24,926 offices, and sent nearly 78,000,000 messages, excluding railway messages and those over leased wires. In 1906 the next largest company had 321,570 miles of wire and nearly 24,000 offices. Six cables connect the United States and Europe, while another links it with the Philippines and China. There also are cables to the Antilles and South America. One of the telephone companies in 1910 had over 8,000,000 miles of wire, over 8,000,000 instruments and over 105,000 employés. Its telephones were used 5,305,900,000 times. Other companies operate over 3,500,000 instruments, and have greatly developed long-distance telephony. The capital invested in telegraphy is over $150,000,000, in telephony over $500,000,000, and continuous telephonic communication is had between points as distant as Birmingham and Minneapolis or Philadelphia and Kansas City. (See Cables, Telegraph and Telephone.)
The postal business is carried on by the federal government (see Postoffice and Dead-Letter Office), the transportation of small or valuable freight by private express-companies, though large goods are also forwarded through them if speed or special safety is desired. (See Express Companies.) In 1910 the postoffice handled 14,850,102,559 pieces of mail at a cost of $229,977,224 at 59,580 offices. The rapidity of travel and communication in the United States is evinced by the fact that it takes the mail only four days and nine hours to traverse the 3,250 miles between New York City and San Francisco.
Government
This is based on the federal constitution of 1787 and the constitutions of the states. The national government (q. v.) began in 1774; the states when the first continental congress initiated their governments. The United States government is a federal republic, and each state is a representative republic, governing itself in its own affairs but without sovereignty and without any relation to any foreign power. The national constitution, which can be altered by the people, defines the powers of the federal government, and reserves “to the states respectively or to the people the powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution nor by it prohibited to the states.” The administration of the affairs of the Union is entrusted to the executive, the legislative and the judicial authority.
Executive power is vested in a president (q. v.) the head of the government, and in a vice-president. Both are elected for a four years' term by an electoral college (q. v.). The president is commander-in-chief of the army and navy, though never appearing at their head, and of the militia in the service of the Union. Washington, for greater efficiency in the executive, in 1789 established the extraconstitutional departments of the navy, the postoffice (a
