From the January, 1916 issue of Erie Railroad Magazine
CHICAGO HEADQUARTERS.
Steamer F. D. Underwood, which arrived Buffalo, December 12th (1915), was the last of the Erie R.R. Lake Line boats to be tied up.
A dinner was given at the Iroquois Hotel. Buffalo, December 17th, for the officers and others of the Lake Line.
The last Erie R.R. Lake Line waybill, made from Buffalo to Milwaukee, had printed on it in large size letters "Farewell." The maker of the bill did not realize how well he had stated the situation, because the application made by the Chicago, Milwaukee and other Boards of Trade, in November, to the commission to reopen the lake line cases, was denied on November 23rd.
A postscript from the January, 1917 issue of Erie Railroad Magazine:
"Rail and Lake Review, Chicago, IL"
Because of the pleasure and profit derived from the informal talk given by H. C. Snyder, assistant general freight agent, to the Erie Traffic Students' club at its opening session in September, an exceptional attendance marked his reappearance to discuss the rail-and-lake situation. The growth of lake traffic, from an insignificant tonnage handled by a few schooners early in the nineteenth century, to the immense volume of freight transported, at the beginning of the twentieth century by a fleet of modern steamers, was depicted in the lucid and striking manner peculiar to the speaker. Needless to state that considerable emphasis was given to the prominence of the Union Steamboat or Erie Railroad Lake Line in the development of this enterprise.
Mr. Snyder then dealt with the conditions that exist today as a result of the so-called emancipation of the lake lines from railroad ownership. Instead of the confidently expected benefit that was to result, the action of the commission had driven innumerable steamers from the Great Lakes and has proven itself a costly experiment to the interests that were so aggressively instrumental in effecting the separation. From the foregoing facts the necessity of pursuing a liberal policy toward transportation companies of the United States, whose prosperity is so closely interwoven with that of the country at large, was greatly appreciated.