Merrick, Harry Hopkins
Joint debate on the St.
Lawrence River ship channel
Joint Debate
on the
St. Lawrence River
Ship Channel
Affirmative:
MR. H. H. MERRICK
of Chicago, 111.;
HON. HENRY J. ALLEN
Governor of Kansas
Negative:
HON. NATHAN L. MILLER
Governor of New York
Before the SEVENTEENTH CONVENTION of the
NATIONAL RIVERS AND HARBORS CONGRESS
WASHINGTON, D. C., MARCH i,
PRICE. TWENTY-FIVE CENTS
Joint Debate
on the
St. Lawrence River
Ship Channel
Affirmative:
MR. H. H. MERRICK
of Chicago, 111.;
HON. HENRY J. ALLEN
Governor of Kansas
Negative:
HON. NATHAN L. MILLER
Governor of New York
Before the SEVENTEENTH CONVENTION of the
NATIONAL RIVERS AND HARBORS CONGRESS
WASHINGTON, D. C., MARCH i, 1922
H
. [ 4 , ; c
Joint Debate on the Proposed
St. Lawrence River Ship Channel
Before the Seventeenth Convention of the National Rivers
and Harbors Congress, Washington, D. C., March 1, 1922
PRESIDENT SMALL: Ladies and Gentlemen: There has been under
consideration by the International Joint Commission, a commission
composed of American and Canadian citizens, a project for the im-
provement and canalization of the St. Lawrence River for the purpose
of providing a ship canal connecting the lakes and the lake ports with
the Atlantic. Its advocates are belligerent and insistent; its propo-
nents are in like position as to their attitude.
When this Congress met in December, 1920, there was strong pres-
sure brought to bear for the discussion of this great project, but
your officers and Executive Board stood out against discussion at that
time, because it was then under consideration by the agency created
by Congress for that purpose. Recently they have made a report,
and, presumably, it is now ready for action by Congress, and, in pur-
suance of the policy of the National Rivers and Harbors Congress
that this shall always be a public forum for the discussion of projects
which have been investigated by the agencies authorized by the Con-
gress of the United States, it was deemed appropriate that it should
be discussed at this session, and, in order that the discussion might
be orderly and confined to those who were selected for the discussion,
it was arranged to have it presented by its proponents and opponents
at the afternoon session today.
The Chair only makes this suggestion pending the debate. It is a
great project. Those who advocate it retain high hopes of its national
benefits. Those who oppose it have, as they think, good reason for
believing that it is not a proper project to be adopted by the Govern-
ment of the United States. The admonition, which the Chair gives in
all seriousness, is this: Consider it on its merits; not sectionally.
(Applause.)
Let us not have any division of the Lake States on the one side and
the Eastern States on the other, because they are all Americans; they
are all patriotic; they all want to do that which will subserve the
best interests of the country. (Applause.)
The following division of the time has been agreed upon : The first
hour will be consumed first by Mr. Merrick for thirty minutes and
then by Governor Allen for thirty minutes. The second hour will be
occupied by Governor Miller. Governor Allen will then have fifteen
minutes for reply and, finally, Governor Miller will have seven
minutes for rejoinder.
One of the distinguished citizens of the City of Chicago, who is not
only a great banker but a man distinguished in the public service,
with whom I first became acquainted when he was president of the
Mississippi Valley Association, is the gentleman whom I will first pre-
sent to you. He is a man of intelligence, of wide information, and is
recognized in the great community in which he lives as a distinguished
citizen. He will speak for the proponents of this great project, and
I now have great pleasure in presenting to you Mr. H. H. Merrick,
of Chicago. (Applause.)
MR. MERRICK: Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: The Great
Lakes-St. Lawrence Deep Waterway is before you for debate, and
your President and Chairman, it seems to me, has made the eminently
proper suggestion that, in its consideration, this Congress, the Rivers
and Harbors Congress, shall cast aside all thoughts of sectionalism and
consider this great problem in its bearing upon the interests of our
United States. We, out in the Central States, the Middle Western
states, the district sometimes referred to in this connection as the
territory of the Great Lakes, ever since that country was first settled,
have had the great dream, common to all mankind through all the
ages, of access to the sea.
It has been no theory of an impracticable character. When we
refer to the Great Lakes as the American Mediterranean we are not
merely dreaming, for, today, in measured tonnage, we have one hun-
dred and twenty-four million tons on the Great Lakes of freights
water borne, the greatest tonnage of its character in the world. We
have developed water carriers and loading and unloading of ships on
that American Mediterranean to a point not known anywhere else
in all the world. Julius Barnes, who, throughout the war period, was
grain administrator for the United States, called my attention recently
to the fact that sometime last September, at Duluth, twelve thousand
tons were loaded in 20 minutes. There is no such record anywhere
in water carriers. So that we feel that we have a right to present to
the Congress of the United States, and to a body such as yours, the
feasibility and the practicability of this plan, and, in so doing, we speak
with authority for eighteen distinct states of that great interior of
the continent.
And, merely that you may have that point in mind, the interest that
lies behind this proposition, after grave consideration, I wish to read
to you the names of those states: Ohio, Michigan, North Dakota,
Nebraska, Montana, Idaho, Indiana, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Kan-
sas, Colorado, Utah, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Wyoming and
Oregon. Our Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Waterways Association has
no individual memberships, and in that it differs from any organiza-
tion of which I have had knowledge. Its membership is that of the
eighteen states acting by their legislatures and voicing their opinions
through their governors. The reference to sectionalism perhaps justi-
fies this remark.
John Barrett, for many years of Washington and known to you all,
in January wrote a letter made public through the press, calling atten-
4
tion to what he believed to be the development of a new sectionalism,
a division between the East and the West, between the great heart of
the continent, where the major portion of the products of the United
States are created, and the North Atlantic seaboard, represented in
some part by New England and New York. And he sounded a note
of warning, which the President considered gravely and to which he
gave great publicity, that this feeling of sectionalism was developing
because of the antagonism between New York and its supporters and
the Middle Western, or Central, states on this subject of access to the
sea.
We of the West deprecate any such feeling. It is all one country
and only very recently joined hands, 100 percent, to accomplish one
result, and, therefore, that result was accomplished at a very, very,
early date the winning of the war. This is no time, especially in a
period of depression, when the world is finding itself, for there to be
a division of opinion and sectional animosity as between the city and
the State of New York and the great Central West. And we regret
that that condition has, in some sense, obtained. We believe that,
through this debate, this joining together before this audience today,
it may be possible in some sense to brush away, to eliminate, that
unfortunate condition.
We, of the West, in working out practical problems during the last
two generations, found that we must approach them with a fair mind;
that first we must find out what the elements of the problem to be
solved were, and the arguments pro and con, and then as best we
might that we must arrive at a determination as to the wise course to
pursue; that we gain nothing by simply stating on the one hand this
is true and on the other hand it is not true. We, all of the eighteen
states and of the district far larger than the eighteen states, repre-
senting forty-two millions of people, have believed for years that we
should have access to the sea for ocean-going ships and deep carriers,
and that that might be had through the St. Lawrence. Canada is now
deepening the Welland Canal so that it will have a draft of 30 feet,
and doing it at its own expense. In the not distant future that
development will be complete.
We, as business men, as bankers, as analysts of conditions, feel that
the great problem, the greatest problem that we have had in the last
generation, save only that presented by the war, has been transporta-
tion, and we approach this subject from the standpoint of transporta-
tion. We believe that the present depression, which has lasted for a
full two years, has been largely emphasized, and, in a very consider-
able degree, increased in severity by reason of the lack of solution of
the problem of transportation. Frozen credits, almost a slang term of
the street; frozen inventories; products of the farm impossible of
movement; demand abroad far in excess of our ability to supply; all
of these resulted from a breakdown in transportation.
At the moment, as the result of this tremendous depression, brought
about in some measure by that very condition, there is no lack
of cars. On the other hand, there are idle cars, but we of the United
States are working at less than 50 percent of normal capacity. And
the greatest experts among the railroad men point out to us that
this condition with which we struggled in 1917 and 1918 and 1919
and in the spring of 1920, where it was impossible to secure cars to
remove the grain, where it was impossible under 60 or 90 days to pro-
cure necessary supplies of merchandise or material, where the car
shortage was estimated as seven hundred thousand cars by the rail-
way executives will again return to us as promptly as a normal
condition of business shall present itself.
I want to read to you for this is a business man's presentation
a letter or an excerpt from an address made recently by Mr. Elisha
Lee, vice president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, delivered at Phila-
delphia before the Manufacturers' Association. Mr. Lee, as most of
you know, is one of the recognized authorities in matters pertaining
to transportation and railroad problems.
"Traffic on our American railroads, measured in ton-miles, doubles
about once in a decade or possibly a little longer."
Doubles about once in a decade 10 years.
"This rate of increase has been maintained for at least two genera-
tions with surprising regularity, despite the various cycles of booms,
panics and depressions through which the country has passed mean-
while. The events of the war, of course, pushed our traffic figures up
to levels some years ahead of the normal growth and we are now
having a corresponding reaction; but get this fact firmly in your
minds, because it is most important:
"The next time our country has a real revival in business we shall
in all probability be confronted with the most severe congestion of
railroad traffic and the greatest inadequacy of railroad facilities ever
experienced in our history. When that happens, rates will be lost
sight of, everyone will be clamoring for service, and our public
highways will again be torn to pieces by huge truck loads of freight
carried over roadways never designed for such purpose, and at rates
and costs of operation so high as to constitute gross economic waste.
Nothing could more quickly check a wave of prosperity than the
inability of our railroad facilities to handle the traffic which good
times would create.
"I am firmly convinced that we face such a condition with almost
absolute certainty in the not remote future. Whether it will come
within a year or two or be deferred for several years I do not for a
moment assume to predict, but, unless the world plunges into hopeless
economic chaos, in which case all reckoning will be wrong, we are
going to push our national figures for production, and, consequently,
of potential railroad traffic, beyond anything ever known before in
peace times and in all likelihood even beyond the levels reached during
the war.
"Then business men will not be bothering themselves very much
about rates. All they will be thinking about will be once more how
to get transportation at any price. For this situation errors of the
past are to blame. We cannot undo the past, but we can learn from
it, and, while probably nothing can be done now to obviate altogether
the coming period of railroad congestion, which all railroad officers
foresee, we can at least mitigate its severity and address ourselves to
the task of securing adequate transportation facilities for the more
distant future."
Now, from the standpoint of debate, feeling this is primarily a mat-
ter of transportation, let us see for a moment where we stand. Our
Congress on the one side and the Dominion of Canada on the other,
appointed a High Commission, a Joint Commission, composed of men
of the two countries, carefully selected from coast to coast in each
case, and that Commission, commencing its labors in 1919, brought
out a report very recently considering the Great Lakes-St. Law-
rence Tidewater project, as to its practicability, feasibility and
expense. The report of the engineers is brief, and a summary of it,
I think, will help to clarify the situation. The report of the engineers
is summarized as follows:
"The physical conditions are favorable for improvements which
will be permanent and will have very low upkeep costs. The develop-
ment of nearly all the potential power in the river, approximately
four million one hundred thousand horsepower, can be made as coor-
dinate parts of schemes of improvement of navigation. The simultane-
ous improvement and development of such a vast quantity is not a
sound economic procedure. A project is submitted designed to pro-
vide channels with a minimum depth of twenty feet and sufficient
width at all points between Lake Ontario and Montreal, which channel
may be subsequently deepened to thirty feet throughout without
destroying any permanent construction, to include the incidental
development of the first of a series of power projects generating one
million four hundred and sixty thousand horsepower net delivered on
a switchboard. To permit the subsequent development of the remain-
ing power in the river, which would be neither hindered nor bene-
fited by this improvement for navigation, the length of canal channel
is only thirty-three miles."
Statement after statement has been made and we resent it, for a
man has a right to resent a thing that is manifestly absolutely false,
that the length of this ship channel is eleven hundred and eighty miles.
The engineers find that the canal is thirty-three miles. Men may
make statements that are not true, that will not stand examination,
and may make them honestly; we all do that. But, when men make
a statement that the ship channel, or the ship canal, is eleven hundred
and eighty miles and the engineers of the International Joint Com-
mission fix it as thirty-three miles, we have a word out West which
Roosevelt sometimes used that goes beyond the word of fallacy, and
needs very few letters. (Laughter.) Those arguments are not fair,
and, when unfair arguments are used and brought forward and made
public in the press day by day and week by week, ultimately there
will be produced a feeling of sectionalism and of injustice and a feel-
ing that there is something behind the argument other than the pur-
poses apparently put forward.
So you have the report of the International Joint Commission
absolutely unanimous and after most earnest consideration ; after visit-
ing all the principal points in the great territory affected and after hav-
7
ing three hearings in New York; listening to evidence for many months;
making an investigation such as has never been made of any great
project in the United States; arriving at a mature judgment and
embodying that judgment in a report to the Congress. Then we have
President Warren G. Harding who, in January, made as a primary
measure of his policies for the future the necessity that the interior
of the continent should be relieved in the matter of transportation so
that the deadlock on freight should be broken. You have the report
of the engineers, the report of the International Joint Commission,
representing the governments of Canada and our own country, and
its high approval by the President of the United States and I notice
on arrival here this morning that again yesterday our President em-
phasized the importance of the Great Lakes- St. Lawrence Deep
Waterway in his message to the Congress on the merchant marine.
I am not going, in the time that I have, to burden you with a mass
of statistics. Any of you who are deeply interested in this and wish to
form your own conclusions can secure all of this data. It is printed
in the report of the International Joint Commission, which you may
obtain. It is printed in other public documents which you may obtain,
and we of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Tidewater Association will
gladly facilitate your desire for anything of that sort.
We have two sets of arguments to meet, and I shall not deal with
them in detail. The opponents are represented by New York, and it
is mighty fine that we have Governor Miller with us today to present
their opposition, but, after reading him for many hours, the conclusion
that I arrived at is that their opposition is in two forms. One is that
it can't be done. It does not matter what these reports are; what the
arguments are in its support. It does not matter what the engineering
investigation may have been nor the conclusions thereon, but we of
New York State say it cannot be done. It is not feasible. It is im-
possible.
The second division of the opposition lies in the claim that, if it is
done, the great traffic of the interior of the continent will flow out by
the water route, and New York port, New York harbor, New York
City and New York State will suffer. I hope I am too good an Ameri-
can to desire, or that any of you would desire, the adoption of any
policy that would be destructive of the interests of the Empire State.
I think it is almost childish to imagine that any such result would
follow. And in that second argument New York makes the statement
that it will cost several hundred millions of dollars. The Joint Com-
mission says $252,000,000, to be divided between the two countries,
Canada and the United States.
And then recently through the public press, whatever the sources
may have been we do not know, the suggestion has been made to the
people of the Mississippi Valley and I had the honor of being for
two years the president of the Mississippi Valley Association that
this development would not be in their interest, because forsooth it
would require enormous sums out of the Treasury of the United States
Government in order that this project of the Great Lakes-St. Law-
rence might be carried through, and to that extent the necessary
8
development of the Mississippi Valley and the Mississippi River and
its tributaries would be damaged, put off, postponed.
Now, there is not a word of truth in that, and out West we have
been taught to at least try to tell the truth and to deal with facts as
they are. There is nothing in the report of the International Joint
Commission, there has been no proposition put forward that Congress
shall appropriate $100,000,000 or $150,000,000 for this purpose. The
entire canal development is to cost only $250,000,000 and that is an
outside estimate, for prices have gone down since those estimates
were made, as you know, on both labor and material, especially
cement and that will result in 1,460,000 horsepower. The reports of
the hydroelectric engineers show that the sale of that horsepower
at approximately one-third of the present price obtaining in the
metropolitan district of New York City would produce a sum sufficient
to pay the interest on a bond issue for the entire cost, to amortize
that bond issue so that it would be entirely retired in 50 years, and to
produce a sinking fund for further development applicable to any
purpose that the International Joint Commission might desire, with
the approval of the two countries, of about $2,500,000 a year.
Now, in these few minutes, I would just like to have you join me
as directors. We are all directors of this corporation, known as the
United States of America, and I am presenting to you a report of
the superintendent and engineers, the operating staff, and I say to
you, "We can issue bonds on this proposition for the entire cost. They
will sell at par. The demand will be in excess of the supply. The
investment will produce a sum sufficient each year to retire the cost,
on an amortization basis, to pay the interest on the bonds, without
a dollar's charge for the passage of the ships by way of tolls. That
will be done out of hydroelectric power. We can do that without a
dollar's increase in taxation; without interfering with the necessary
improvements in the Valley, in the Intracoastal Canal and other
projects of like character and we will guarantee that this is the result.
It is assured. It has passed every test and no man has successfully
refuted it or attacked it." Would you as directors and mind you,
you are stockholders in that corporation of the United States of
America would you as directors fail to vote in favor of that propo-
sition if you believed the facts that I have stated to you? Is that sec-
tional?
One more flight and I am through. The Railroad Executives' Asso-
ciation estimated that it would cost from one to two billion dollars a
year, over a period of eight to ten years, to rehabilitate the railroads
in order that they might meet normal conditions. That estimate was
made two years ago. No progress has been made in the interim.
We have less miles of railroad than we had a year ago. And a year
ago we had less than the year before. Railroad mileage has been
abandoned. We have less cars. Our rolling stock is not in as good
condition as it was five years ago. You all know that. And the Port
of New York, which stands in opposition, realizing the fact that it
has represented the bottle neck through which our commerce and our
finance and our national life have been strangled, the Port of New
9
York now proposes to spend approximately $500,000,000 to increase
the facilities of the Port of New York, and it says, "Let us abandon
everything else and force your commerce through here."
The railroad men tell me that the prime business of the box car is
to stand still. A railroad investigation measured the movement of a
car as 20 miles a day the average run of a box car. We are not
talking about Leviathans. We are not talking of great ocean carriers
of passengers and fast freights. We are talking of tramps, of which
the world has a surplus, and again New York comes forward through
its engineers and, Governor Miller, I call upon you as the Executive
of the State of New York to see that these false statements are cor-
rected, in order that this feeling of sectionalism may be dissipated.
Let us be fair.
I have a letter, written within the last three days, but I have not
the time to read it to you, from the Manitoba Shipbuilding Company,
the largest on the Great Lakes, giving the downright, cold, hard facts
on a similar character of boats. The Great Lakes boat costs 60 to 65
dollars a ton, the ocean carrier of like character from 80 to 85 dollars
a ton, and the International Joint Commission say the ratio last year
was $120 a ton for the lake carriers and for a similar ocean carrier
$140; yet, New York has used figures three times these, and I say
they are false; they are unjust.
Sometimes, after all, we are all children. We go back to the days
of Mother Goose. There came to my mind in connection with this feel-
ing of sectionalism, a little rhyme that was familiar to you all in your
childhood which applies to our opponents in this manner, and their
feelings, so far as they have advanced the arguments up to date :
"I do not like you, Doctor Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell ;
But this one thing I know full well
I do not like you, Doctor Fell."
Thank you. (Applause.)
PRESIDENT SMALL: Ladies and Gentlemen: In this great country
of ours, different sections are recognized as taking different attitudes
and looking at social and economic and public questions from different
viewpoints. The great Valley of the Mississippi has certain recog-
nized virtues which distinguish it from other sections, but, with all the
differences, the people of every section are patriotic American citi-
zens. (Applause.) There is, perhaps, no citizen of the day who typi-
fies in a better way the spirit and the ideals and the methods of
thought of the great Mississippi Valley than does the virile Governor
of Kansas. (More applause.) I have great pleasure in presenting to
you, Governor Henry J. Allen. (Long applause.)
GOVERNOR HENRY J. ALLEN, of Kansas: Mr. Chairman, Governor
Miller, Fellow Citizens: Much has been said in Washington against
the dangers of sectionalism, but I wish to begin by the statement that
there is not going to be any sectional trouble between Governor Miller
and myself. (Laughter.) Upon a perfectly peaceful platform we met
at the Governors' Conference and decided that if we could avoid this
10
joint debate We were going to avoid it, and we would settle the dis-
cussion upon governmental lines, and I was surprised when there
finally came from this great Congress an invitation to talk upon a
subject, all the facts of which, I presume, had been settled before
their debate was thought of. As a matter of fact, I think the closing
words were said yesterday by the President of the United States, and,
as I understand it, we are only here before this Congress discussing
this question because New York wishes to talk some more about it.
(Laughter.) We do think that my distinguished colleague called
attention to one thing that ought to be taken under consideration. I
think that we ought to know, when Governor Miller is through, this
one definite thing whether he is opposing the St. Lawrence seaway
because he thinks it won't work or because he thinks it will work.
(Laughter.) It is manifestly improper for him to use both argu-
ments. (Laughter.)
Out in the Middle West, the home of the eighteen states whose com-
mission I bear, we are the surplus food producing area of the United
States. Seventy percent of all the wheat produced in the United
States, 66 percent of all the corn, 80 percent of all the oats and 70
percent of the barley is produced in the Mississippi Valley and con-
tiguous states, and for all time we have had present before us always
the tragedy of transportation, while the others of you have been
thinking of transportation in terms of rivers and oceans and coming
here for your annual appropriations, which we have come to term,
good naturedly, "pork barrel" appropriations. Out in the Middle
West never have we raised a voice against any appropriations for
a waterway, although never have we had any advantage of a water-
way.
Even has it come to the point in the past that we have paid dis-
criminatory freight rates charged by the railway to make up the
deficit they have been allowed to create in favor of some theoretical
water competing point. (Applause.) They have created a deficit for
the purpose of stamping out competition and then they have come to
the Middle West, to the area that is far from any benefits of water
competition, and they have made us pay for our own funeral.
(Laughter.) I am not here to quarrel about that or about anything
else. I am only here to say that the tragedy of transportation as it
grips the Middle West is a real tragedy. And when you present to
us the idea that we may bring the seacoast twelve hundred miles
nearer to the Middle West than it now is, without any intention what-
soever to injure New York, we do say if that seacoast is a good thing
for New York, we would like to have it also.
We are now producing our foodstuffs upon the longest rail radius
in the history of the world. The competing countries that produce
wheat, produce it upon a rail radius of two hundred and fifty to three
hundred miles, as in Russia and in South America. We have been
producing upon a rail radius of twelve hundred to fourteen hundred
miles. Now there comes the simple proposal that we may get nearer
the coast, and all of the engineers who have investigated the situation
11
have said that it is feasible, that it is practical. The commission
appointed by Congress to make scientific investigations of the theory
says it is practical, and I think it is settled then so far as that is
concerned. (Applause.)
And then we come to consider the objections of those who are
objecting. (Laughter.) Oh, I presume, that if, at the dawn of crea-
tion, the pillars of Hercules had fallen together rather than apart, it
would have been a long while before the great communities of Mar-
seilles, Barcelona or Trieste would have considered the advisability of
getting out to the sea, and I presume that when finally the vision of
the possibilities of the Mediterranean ports had gotten in the brain of
these fanatics and they had begun to discuss the engineering possi-
bility of breaking through those rock-bound pillars, Lisbon and some
of the other places along the coast would have said it is a fanatical
scheme. Nature did not fix it up that way, and who is man that he
should seek to correct mistakes of nature? I suppose that Bordeaux
would have wanted to settle it by building a ship canal to connect with
the Gironde River. Those matters are so natural the reaction of
local pride and local interests that we do not need to denounce them
here this afternoon as sectional. They are natural. We would feel
the same way about it. Fortunately, the pillars fell apart, so that
all men had to do in the Baltic and the Mediterranean was to build
their ships and set their sails.
If nature had not thrown a barrier across the Great Lakes in the
North, then the first ships that penetrated the St. Lawrence would
have gone to Duluth, Chicago and Toledo, the land lubbers of Wis-
consin would have become maritime, and the Non-partisan League of
North Dakota would have had the active assistance of the longshore-
men of Duluth. (Applause.)
The difficulty of transportation, as we confront it in the Middle
West, is that there are not enough box cars when we need them.
There is a surplus now. Oh, I used to have conferences by the dozen
with railroad presidents and railroad traffic managers. They would
come to my office. I would say, "For pity's sake let's get some box
cars; twenty million bushels of wheat are piled upon the Kansas wheat
fields and we cannot get them to the port of export because we cannot
find any box cars." And then they would start an investigation.
They would find the box cars tied up at the ports of New York, Gal-
veston and elsewhere. "Why," said a man to me on that thing, "when
you start a carload of grain from Chicago to New York, when it has
reached Trenton, New Jersey, it is only half way (laughter), only
half way so far as time is concerned and not half way yet so far as
expense is concerned." (Laughter.) (Applause.)
And so, when they bring to us the attractive idea that we may
shorten our rail haul by having ocean boats at Chicago, we say if it
can be done we want it to be done. Oh, there is in that expression no
sectionalism, no sentiment against New York. God bless New York!
We have sent more people to help build up New York than any State
12
of its size in the country. (Applause.) We are very much for them!
We do not want to put any burden upon New York.
I want to offer one objection to what Governor Miller said not long
ago at Buffalo and I am not going to deal with his Buffalo speech.
He may be having the same speech in his mind today. (Laughter.)
If he does I will have the opportunity to deal with it later, but he says
this is going to cost I have forgotten how much he had the cost
figured at that time, but he is a progressive man and I imagine it will
be more this time (laughter) and he says whatever the cost, New
York pays thirty percent.
I dissent. New York does not pay thirty percent of the taxes of
this country. New York City is at the seat of customs and catches
them coming and going (laughter) and, in addition to this great
revenue she collects, there have moved from Kansas and Iowa and
Illinois and Nebraska and Missouri, from all these other eighteen
States, some able men who still retain their productive operations in
these States, but they pay their taxes upon those fortunes in their
New York offices. I am not seeking to reflect upon New York, won-
derful Empire State, but her ten million people are not more produc-
tive or more important than the ten million people of any other section
of the country. (Applause.) And when New York calls our atten-
tion to the fact that she takes in more money, that is merely her
quaint way (applause) of explaining that she gets more than anybody
else. (Applause.)
I think that I could do better in the very brief time that remains to
me by calling attention to some of these objections to the St. Law-
rence seaway project. I know they will seem to you superficial, but
these are the only objections there are. That is why I am calling
attention to them. (Applause.) (Laughter.) First, one of the pro-
testants has objected to this and has submitted the barge canal of
New York as the only remedy. Let me say now that we have no
fight upon the barge canal of New York. The most enthusiastic of
its supporters tell us that it is capable of taking care of ten million
tons each way. The demand for transportation of these eighteen
States is two hundred million tons and you cannot speak of com-
petition with comparisons like that.
But, said one of the opponents, the objection to the St. Lawrence
proposition is that, while the barge canal extends to a port that is
open all the year round, the St. Lawrence project winds up at a port
that is closed all but seven months in the year. We all know that is
a superficial objection, because the New York barge canal is closed
during exactly the same months as Montreal harbor. The fact that
New York harbor is open the year round does not protect the short
season on the New York barge canal, but I am proud of the courage
with which New York has builded the barge canal, and with all my
heart I wish it well, but there is nothing in the barge canal that com-
petes with our project.
The Buffalo papers have been screaming at us in the Middle West
13
and saying, "Come on here; here you have it now." Well, we are not
bound for Buffalo. We are bound for Liverpool. (Applause.)
They speak of the fogs and ice. Well, there are always fogs and
ice, and you do not avoid the fogs and ice merely because you leave
the harbor of New York. The fogs and the ice are still in the Atlantic
Ocean and the answer to the short-term theory is, of course, that the
St. Lawrence is open during the period of the year which demands
peak loads and those are the periods of the year in which, as a food
producing area, we are deeply concerned, because it is the price we
get for our surplus that makes the price of the market. (Applause.)
Our surplus must lie in the field of its production while waiting for
transportation facilities and then come only into the possibility of
distribution when the world has bought its surplus elsewhere. We
have fallen far behind in the race of development because we have not
solved our transportation problem. (Applause.)
Then they speak of the tortuous channels. Now I think there is
less restricted channel in the St. Lawrence route than in the Suez.
It is a far-fetched objection that has no well, of course, an objection,
to be influential, ought to have behind it the facts. As my colleague
stated, on the authority of an insurance expert called by the opposi-
tion, the difference between the rates out of New York and out of
Montreal on the same class of risks is negligible. We have looked
that up. I mentioned that because that is one of the objections.
It says here, one of these objections is, that no other boat can com-
pete with the bulk lake carrier. Well, why, I wonder? The bulk
carrier on the lakes does not engage in the business that is already
developed in the ports of Chicago, Duluth or Toledo, the ports that
take our export food products across. We have no competition with
lake boats that do a local business between lake ports, or for the
purpose of breaking bulk at Buffalo.
There is only one objection that I have read that rather gets me,
and I am going to yield to Governor Miller this point. This came to
me this morning from a newspaper in Buffalo. It is somewhat per-
sonal, but I know you will excuse me for violating the courtesies. It
is not sectional. (Laughter.) It says, "Governor Henry J. Allen of
Kansas," and then it gets very complimentary and says I am a very
excellent man "who probably never saw a canal in his life." Now,
that is not just. I have seen Governor Miller's barge canal. (Laugh-
ter.) There wasn't any water in it the day I saw it. It is as fine
and good looking a canal as I ever saw in my life. And I have seen
other canals, but it says "he takes exception to an argument made by
the Governor of the State which has the greatest canal system in the
world" which was some courage, I take it.
But it says, "Does Governor Allen know, but of course he does not,
that grain gets heated in transit and that one of the effects of unload-
ing it in transit at Buffalo is to cool it?" (Laughter.) I yield that
if that is one of the purposes of unloading at Buffalo, then I have no
further objections. We do not wish our grain to bake en route.
(Laughter.)
14
Then it speaks of the cost, the relative cost of an ocean-going boat
and a lake boat, and builds up as one of the impossibilities of the sit-
uation that you cannot afford to build ocean-going boats and the fig-
ures show that now the relation in the cost between a lake boat and an
ocean-going boat is as one twenty to one forty. There are twenty of
these and I don't know whether I am going to get all through them
or not.
It says the present lake traffic is 90 percent ore and coal. That is
no argument. That is all right, but we are seeking to cover these
great lakes, these great inland seas, with a charter of transportation
that will help the whole country, because it will give to the Middle
West the opportunity to use the cheap transportation that God
Almighty meant we should have when he gave us water. (Applause.)
We are not expecting to live upon the present transportation that is
upon the lakes. What we are going to do is to have an addition to
the present transportation upon the lakes. That is all. We are be-
coming a water -minded country. (Laughter.)
"The movement of foodstuffs is ceasing." An official of Canada
I wish to offer no word of disrespect to him; that would be sectional
came out with the statement the other day that we had better not
build this canal, because he had learned, from some source that he
thought was accurate, that in ten years the United States would be
eating all the wheat she produced, and with this about to overtake us,
he said, "Why expend two hundred and fifty million dollars for the
purpose of creating export transportation when in ten years we will
not have anything to export?" You know it really seems too bad to
take time to answer an argument of that sort. This was not the sort
of Canadian who discovered the possibilities of the great wheat coun-
try around Calgary and Winnipeg. Why, Canada stands today with
the potential possibility of fifty million prosperous people.
Who shall say when we have reached the possibilities of production?
Why, the day may even come when, under the pressure of need, our
agriculture may reclaim the abandoned farms of New York State and
bring them back into production. In Kansas, in ten years, we have
seen the evolution of Western Kansas from a livestock country to a
farming country. We have merely scratched the surface of the pos-
sibilities of production, and in this great land possessing one hundred
million people, every man who knows the situation and studies it with
an eye to history, taking advantage of the experience of the world,
knows that in the United States, there is room for four hundred mil*
lion prosperous people. For a man to sit back and say, "We have
finished raising wheat; we won't need the export," he is as blind as
the figure sitting on the coin looking ever backward.
Then the statement has been made that no authority on navigation
has declared this project to be feasible. Oh, I say that that is going
rather strong. Would not you ? I do not know of any authority, any
engineering authority in navigation, who has not declared it to be
feasible upon his experience and giving his judgment as an authority
upon navigation. Mr. Goethals and I mention his name with due
15
reverence to his great ability and his great service to this country in
the building of the Panama Canal gave it as his opinion, offhand, in
Chicago not long ago, gave what we out West call a curbstone opinion,
that this was not a practical project. He said, speaking as a resident
of New York now, there is the rub (laughter) and he spoke as
something more than a resident of New York, he spoke as an official
of New York, as the consulting engineer of the Port Commission of
New York and New Jersey, and so, speaking as that, he said: "While
I have not read the report or studied the decision, I am sure it is
impractical."
Now, he is a great man, but the opinion of a great engineer who
modifies it by saying, "I haven't studied it, I don't know anything
about it," is of no more value than the opinion of any other citizen.
I would prize his opinion if he had studied it as these other great
engineers have studied it; as Colonel Wooton has studied it; as Mr.
Saunders has studied it, and all these men who compose the estab-
lished engineering societies of this country. But, taking that word
from a man, however great he may be, who declares he hasn't studied
it, and placing against that word the report of the International Com-
mission the report upon which the President of the United States
stood yesterday when he declared for the accomplishment of the St.
Lawrence project I would say, in view of all this, the contribution
of General Goethals to the subject is unimportant. (Applause.)
GOVERNOR MILLER: I don't wish to be technical on time.
GOVERNOR ALLEN: I am going to be technical. This is not going
to be sectionalism. I don't want to take any of his time. I want to
say in the four minutes I have left maybe I will have time to deal
with some of these things.
"Montreal will be the chief gainer." Montreal is very indifferent
to this project. Montreal knows that Chicago and the other lake
ports will be the chief gainers of this enterprise. Montreal knows
that the great productive areas of these eighteen Mid- Western States
are going to be the chief gainers of the enterprise. Montreal knows
that we are not seeking to build this canal just for the pleasure of
sailing by Montreal with our cargo loaded at the home ports.
"We ought not to go into partnership with Canada." Why not?
Why, for all the years that have seen the two nations living side by
side, a thing that does not exist anywhere else on the face of earth,
all the four thousand miles of border between two great lands and
not a shot has ever been fired across them, not a fortress exists, not
a need exists anywhere along those borders except for the new revenue
officers put there by the Volstead Act. (Applause.) If what I hear
about them is true they are not injuring Canada. (Laughter.) But,
why not go into partnership with Canada in the creation of a great
arm of transportation that will serve the food producing areas of
Canada and the United States? Why not? (Applause.) We have
treaties that bind us to a common purpose and guarantee in per-
petuity the good offices of each nation toward the other.
Some suggestion has been made that, bound up in this, somewhere,
16
some way, there is a power concern that is seeking graft. Well, if
this is created under the safeguarding influences of both Governments
and the added safeguard of the government of New York, which will
distribute the power which belongs to New York, under all of this,
isn't it rather weak to stand before a mighty project like this and
say we do not dare to create all that water power for fear something
crooked will be done in the way of distribution? Now, friends, that
is bosh. We are not that much afraid of anything in New York or
the United States and, thank God, they are not afraid of graft in
Canada.
This is a Government enterprise, to be guaranteed by the Govern-
ments of Canada and the United States, to be builded with economy
and the power created to be distributed according to the ownership
of the two nations. And there is not a single thing in the argument
that if you create this thing you will create graft. Create this power,
my friends, and sell New York her hydrp-electric power at the rate
that will be made possible by the creation of this enterprise, and you
can save to New York ninety million dollars a year in her fuel bill.
And I am not afraid that New York engineers would graft upon this
privilege. I am not afraid that any nation, that any government
concerned with it, would take advantage of the situation.
I see the Chairman is just about to pound me down because I expect
to be severe with Governor Miller in holding him to his time. I don't
wish to take any time from him. I only wish to say, with the utmost
of an American citizen, that we are for this project in the Middle
West because we need this arm of transportation. We have lived in
the tragedy of transportation so long that this comes to us with a
possibility to multiply our products and to do it at a profit. I thank
you very much. (Applause.)
PRESIDENT SMALL: Ladies and Gentlemen: The Empire State,
with its great population of more than ten million, has diversified
interests of various kinds. The chief executive of that State from
time to time often illustrated the genius and the progress of the great
State of New York and, without disparagement to any of the prede-
cessors of the present occupant of that office, unless the information
which I have received and which I do not doubt is incorrect, the
present great executive of the State of New York measures up in
full degree to the accomplishments of his great predecessors. It is a
great pleasure to present to you the gentleman who will now discuss
the other side of this very interesting governmental project, Governor
Nathan L. Miller. (Applause and cheering.)
GOVERNOR NATHAN L. MILLER, of New York: Mr. President, Gov-
ernor Allen, Mr. Merrick, Ladies and Gentlemen: I want to assure
you at the outset that I am not here because either New York or I
wanted to talk more upon this project. I came here reluctantly, be-
cause I knew that my presence would be used to support the assertion
which you have heard from both of the distinguished gentlemen who
have spoken upon the other side, that New York is the opposition to
17
this project. It is a great national undertaking and I have come here
to discuss it, not from the standpoint of the State of New York nor
as a citizen of the State of New York, but as a citizen of the United
States; and I intend to confine what remarks I make solely to the
proposition as to whether it has been established that this project is
in the interest of the United States. (Applause.)
Governor Allen wants to know whether we are opposed to this
because we think it will not work or because we fear it will. Now,
I do not wish him to remain longer in doubt as to the attitude of the
State from which I come, although I am not here to speak for that
State. If there is any reasonable assurance that this tragedy which
the Governor says has been resting upon the Middle West can be
removed ; if there is any reasonable assurance that the Atlantic Ocean
can be extended two thousand miles into the interior of this country,
then the State of New York will heartily support this project. (Loud
applause and cheering.)
I labor under a considerable handicap because, while I expected,
when I accepted the invitation, only to have to go up against Governor
Allen, I find that I am up against two of the distinguished and able
proponents of this project. I am also laboring under a further handi-
cap and that is that their side of the question greatly appeals to the
imagination and I have discovered that the imaginations of Brother
Allen and of Mr. Merrick are equal to the situation. (Applause.)
There are two reasons why the Middle West has become so insistent
for this project that she uses the term "sectional." I want to say
now that there is no sectional feeling in the State of New York on this
subject. I am not even going to approach that short and ugly word
which Brother Merrick hinted at though. he did not utter. There are
two explanations why the Middle West has so aroused public opinion
there as to become insistent for this project and so insistent that they
do not brook any opposition whatever. One of them is the tragedy
the Governor has referred to. We sympathize with the Middle West
and, if there is any way to cure that tragedy and I am going to
suggest one before I am through, and it won't be the barge canal
either then we are in favor of curing it. Those of us who have read
what happened during the years succeeding the war when the grain
growers of the West saw their grain waiting, when there was a
market ready to take it at good prices, and had to lose that market
because they could not get transportation, we can understand why
the people of the West feel as they do.
Now, there is one other reason which explains it, and that is the
tremendous appeal to the imagination which this project of extending
the Atlantic Ocean 2,000 miles inland makes. Somebody was kind
enough to send me just before coming here this clipping from the
St. Louis Post Dispatch of January 29. There you see painted what
will happen when this new Mediterranean Sea is created. It is
headed, "Bringing the Atlantic Ocean into the Middle West." It says,
"Liners would ply between Chicago and Liverpool" ; and it says, "This
jg the kind of news items that the people of the Middle West will be
18
able to read: 'The Martinique from Liverpool docked at Chicago
terday. Among those on board were ' ; or, 'The Leviathan sailed
yesterday for Hamburg. She will touch at Cleveland and Detroit for
passengers. The freighters Lancaster and York sailed from Duluth
yesterday with full cargoes of grain for Bremen.' "
Those two things, the tragedy, coupled with this appeal to the
imagination, account for the feeling in the Middle West which causes
this word "sectionalism" to be used. Reference has been made to the
President's message yesterday to Congress. That is a kind of a
broadened vision which he said had caused the demonstration of the
Middle West in favor of this project a vision of something which
you know is impossible. Now, I believe in visions. Great things are
accomplished by men of vision. We have been suffering, however, for
some time in this country from the policies of men who thought they
were men of vision, but who, in fact, were visionaries. (Applause.)
Now, I wish to discuss this subject not from the imaginative stand-
point, not to paint pictures or to see visions but to consider the cold,
hard facts.
Our friends say that that is the matter to be considered the facts.
And then they start out with the assumption, which they say has
been demonstrated by the engineers and by the reports of the Inter-
national Joint Commission, that this project will do what they claim
for it and, upon that assumption, they paint these pictures which
Governor Allen has been painting. Now, on that assumption, Gov-
ernor Allen, I agree with you. If your assumption is correct, then
we are with you and New York will join with you regardless of
whether she pays 30 percent of the taxes or not. (Applause.) And
I do not think it makes any difference how much taxes New York
pays. If they are equally distributed, I agree with Governor Allen
that, if the rate is 30 percent, then it is her good fortune.
I hope that we are not so provincial in New York that we cannot
understand that anything that will serve the great Middle West and
help to develop its great interests will also serve the State of New
York. (Applause.) And I want it understood that the State of
New York is not afraid of what may happen to the Port of New
York, nor is it afraid of competition with the barge canal. We have
constructed the barge canal at an enormous expense. You can use
it or not, as you see fit. If you do use it, it will not cost you any-
thing, because New York maintains it at its own expense. (Ap-
plause.)
Now, let us get down to facts. And what is the first fact? How
is this proposition to be financed? They dress it up in alluring colors.
They say that this gigantic project can be undertaken without in-
volving the slightest expense to the Federal Treasury and so it would
not interfere with the development of the Mississippi and its tribu-
taries and it would not interfere with expenditure of money on other
river and harbor improvements. Now, I say at the outset that the
question of financing this project in the manner suggested has not
19
been considered in any way that entitles the name consideration to
be given to it.
They say the water power will take care of it and I was glad to
hear the admission from Governor Allen that the State of New York
owns that water power, so far as it is within the State of New York.
Well, that is the law. It is settled by the decision of the Court of
Appeals of New York, as well as of the Supreme Court of the United
States in the so-called Long Sault Case, that the State of New York
owns in trust for its people the bed of the St. Lawrence River on the
American side; and that carries with it, under the law of riparian
right which prevails in the East, that carries with it the right to the
use of the water and the development of the water for power purposes.
They say that they propose to take that water power, not merely to
finance the part of the project that has to do with the development of
power, but to finance the entire project. Well, now, let us consider
that for just a moment.
I grant that the right of New York is subordinate to the power of
Congress to improve navigation. I grant that if Congress, in the
improvement of navigation, develops water power as a mere incident,
Congress may say how that water power shall be disposed of, even
though it thus does take rights belonging to a State. But when you
make the water power not the incident, but so far the main project
as to saddle it with the entire burden of cost, then you can no longer
say that the power is a mere incident. Now, I shall not discuss the
legal question as to the legal right to do that thing. I want, how-
ever, to discuss the moral question.
The assertion has been made I do not think it was made here
today, but it is one of the stock arguments that the opening of this
ship canal will add ten cents a bushel, at least five cents, to the value
of every bushel of grain produced in this country, and they interpret
that to mean $350,000,000 to the people of the Middle West. That is
a vision. But assuming it to be sound, I want to ask Governor Allen
if he thinks that it is a fair thing to make the power uses of New
York and New England pay the entire cost, assuming that that is
feasible, of both the power project and the navigation project?
(Applause.)
Now, I admit that power ought to bear the cost of the power part
of it, but I say that at least one of two courses should be followed
with reference to the expense for navigation. Either it should be
collected from the tolls and I do not believe in tolls. The State of
New York does not exact any tolls for passage through the barge
canal. I hope the time will come, and come as speedily as possible,
when we will not exact any tolls for passage through the Panama
Canal. (Applause.) I say that one of two propositions is fair,
either this $350,000,000 a year, that Brother Allen is persuaded will
be saved for his people, should bear the cost of the navigation project,
or else it should be paid out of the Federal Treasury of the United
States. (Applause.)
Now, there is another thing they have not thought of when they
20
propose to saddle the entire cost on water power, and that is that this
power would be distributed, as Governor Allen has suggested, under
the jurisdiction of the Utilities Commissions of the States in which it
is distributed. That is the provision now in the Federal water power
bill. I do not suppose that Congress could be induced to take the
water power of a State out of the control of its Water Power Com-
mission, but I am quite certain that the Public Service Commissions
of the State of New York and of the New England States would insist
that the capital charge to be distributed to water power should be
limited to the capital cost attributable to development of power.
Now, where does that lead us? That leads you to the report of
the engineers, and I am now coming to that. Roughly, on the basis
of a 25-foot canal, the cost would be apportioned probably in about
the ratio of $150,000,000 to water power and $100,000,000 to naviga-
tion. If you deepen it for ten feet, according to the report of the
engineers, the cost that would be charged to navigation would go up
something like eighteen or twenty millions of dollars. Now, so much
for that.
They say, therefore, without having even studied that side of the
question, they say they would commit the Government to this project.
The resolution is now in Congress providing for the issuance of bonds
to be guaranteed by the two nations. They do not say how the bonds
are to be financed. They do not say how the interest is to be pro-
vided for or how they are to be amortized. But our friends say, with-
out having considered the difficulties in their way, "Oh, it will be paid
from the water power, and so," they say, "we are not committing the
Treasury of the United States to anything, and, therefore, those who
fear their other local improvements may be jeopardized may lay their
fears aside."
Now, what is the next proposition? Governor Allen says that the
report of the engineers is that this project is feasible. The engineers
have not reported on that subject at all. They were not required to
report upon that subject at all. They say in their report that they
have not considered that subject. They were required to report upon
the engineering aspects of it. They say that this canal can be con-
structed and that there is no doubt but that it can be constructed.
They say that for two hundred and fifty million dollars, or two hun-
dred and twenty-five million, a 25-foot canal can be provided and
1,400,000 horse power I am using, of course, round figures can be
developed. That is what they say and all they say.
Now, I ascertained, first, that the report of the engineers shows
upon the face of it that it is superficial. The report of this Inter-
national Joint Commission, that we have heard so much about, shows
that it is superficial. The report of other engineers who have studied
the project, which was submitted to the International Joint Commis-
sion, showed that it was superficial. Now, what is my justification
for that statement? I refer now to page 167 of the Report of the
International Commission, and what do they say? They say that the
instructions to the Engineering Board make it clear that they are not
21
expected to submit anything more than an outline plan and lump sum
estimates, the period of twelve months allowed them for the work
being considered insufficient for the preparation of detailed plans and
estimates.
While it was obviously impossible to deal exhaustively with such a
very large and complicated engineering problem in twelve months,
the Engineering Board has unquestionably, both in the matter of
plans and estimates, given the Commission more detailed information
than the strict letter of the instructions called for, and has put it in
a form that leaves very little to be desired. They then recommend
this: They recommend that this report be referred back to another
board, with a large membership of other distinguished men in the
engineering profession, in order to determine what the real facts are.
They say that that should be done after the plan has been adopted.
I say that it should be done before the plan is adopted. (Loud ap-
plause and cheers.)
We have heard from Mr. Merrick how the directors of a corpora-
tion manage its affairs. I am sure that he does not allow any cor-
poration of which he is a director, or officer, to act upon a project so
important without having the complete advice before instead of after-
ward. (Applause.) But that is not all. These estimates of two
hundred and fifty million dollars I am not charging bad faith; I am
not going even to hint at that short and ugly word but I say that at
least they invite careful scrutiny; and a systematic and persistent
attempt is being made to belittle those things that are serious against
the project and to magnify those things that are thought to make in
its favor. (Applause.) My figures have not grown any, Governor
Allen.
GOVERNOR ALLEN: Good.
GOVERNOR MILLER: I do not know how much this would cost. The
figures that I used at Buffalo, to which he has referred, were figures
of a distinguished hydraulic engineer, Hugh Cooper, and the people of
the Mississippi Valley know something about his engineering ability
because one of his monumental engineering works is there.
Now, in the first place, it appears upon the face of this very report
of the engineers that we have made no allowance whatever for interest
during the period of construction, or until the time our rivers will be
self-supporting. Think of an engineer omitting such an item! Ten
years is the period that the International Joint Commission says will
be required. We thought we could construct the barge canal in ten
years, and it took twenty. But in ten years interest charges mount
up, and when the 10 years are past and the thing is complete it is not
going to pay at once. It is going to take some years before you get
the line of which the Mauretania is a part to change her sailing to go
to Chicago. (Great applause.)
Water power! There is no market, or practically no market, what-
ever at the place where this power will be developed; and there are
many engineering features yet to be studied before it is determined
where that market is going to be and how much it is going to cost to
22
get the electricity to that market. At any rate, it is going to take
years how many, I do not know during which fresh charges are
going to pile up. But they give it out over the country that this thing
can be done for two hundred and fifty million dollars, a mere baga-
telle, less than they will save in one year on wheat! And then they
want to commit the Government and the Federal Treasury to the
assumption that, in some way not designated, not even studied, water
power is going to pay for it. Now, I say that an engineering report
which omits to make an account of an item of cost of such large pro-
portion, is impeached upon its face, but that is not all.
They made no borings in order to determine the character of the
rock on which these immense works are to be constructed. Do you
know anything about the St. Lawrence? About the swiftness of its
currents? The depth of its waters? The icy conditions which exist
there in the winter, under more difficult conditions to cope with than
probably exist in any other stream of water where power can be
developed on the face of the earth? Works that will be needed to
withstand the enormous pressure, works to withstand the accumula-
tions of ice, have been planned without a single boring to determine
the character of the rock upon which they are to rest! (Applause.)
And they say it has been established that this thing can be done for
two hundred and fifty millions of dollars! They made surface obser-
vations only, and attention has been called to that fact by the report
of the same engineer to whom I have referred, Hugh L. Cooper, which
was filed with the International Joint Commission.
But that is not all. Mr. Cooper says in addition that, if the works
are constructed in the way these engineers have planned, they will
automatically close down every winter from the effects of ice. No
engineers are controverting this statement, and that is not all. They
propose to develop a million four hundred thousand horsepower. He
says that if the dam, the first dam, the only one that is now to be
constructed to develop power, the dam in the fourth section, if that is
placed where it ought to be placed and is constructed as it ought to
be constructed, it will develop not simply a million four hundred thou-
sand horsepower but an additional horsepower of two hundred forty
thousand, computed on a load factor of seventy.
The other two hundred and fifty or three hundred gross might help
a little to solve this financial problem that they have got, in case they
are going to be unfair enough to ask the water power users of New
York, if they exist in sufficient quantity to use this electric power, to
ask them to bear the entire burden. I say and I now speak for the
people of the State of New York because there I have a duty to per-
form we are interested in the development of hydro-electric energy.
We are not afraid, as Governor Allen says, and we are not intending
to let it go to waste for fear of graft. We intend to have it de-
veloped and, of course, it must be developed in cooperation with the
Federal Government and with Canada, because an international
boundary stream is involved. But we say that two hundred and forty
thousand, or three hundred thousand gross, horsepower belonging to
23
us ought not to be sacrificed for a navigation project, at least unless
it is first proven that it is necessary to make that sacrifice and unless
it is next proven that that navigation project is feasible. (Applause.)
But I must hasten because I see my time is flying. And I must
pass on from these engineering matters. I submit that I have said
enough already to show that upon the engineering features the sur-
face has not been scratched. There are two great projects here, one
a water power, one a navigation project. Neither, if both are fea-
sible, should be sacrificed for the other. Both should be developed to
the very maximum of efficiency and each, so far as may be, should
contribute to the other, but I say that before we commit ourselves to
that project let us first have what these gentlemen are asking for
facts. (Applause.) Now, so much for that.
They have not even considered in a scientific way how they are
going to market this power, which, they say, is going to finance this
project. There have been no surveys made to determine where the
lines are to be constructed or how, and they would have to go a long
way around, at least until we can amend our State constitution and
I am trying to have it amended, Governor Allen, not only to help
transmission from the St. Lawrence but transmission of power from
other places. Our constitution prohibits the construction of a trans-
mission line through our Adirondack preserve, and it would be neces-
sary to build transmission lines around that preserve. Nobody has
figured at all, so far as the proof discloses, what it would cost to
develop those great high tension, at least two hundred and fifty thou-
sand voltage, wires to their market. Nobody has yet said where their
market would be. They have done this: They have taken the use of
power; they have said New England uses so much power, steam and
hydro-electric ; New York so much ; and they have taken it for granted
that there won't be any trouble in marketing this particular power.
They refer also in their report to the report of the Super Power
Zone Commission. I don't know whether you know what that is or
not. I have not time to discuss it. It is simply a general survey.
It is a project that appeals powerfully to the imagination and I hope
some day may be realized. That day is long in the future. If it
should be realized, it involves electrification of these broken down
railroads that have not got enough money to buy the box cars that
Brother Merrick says they need. It involves the scrapping of all the
present steam plants and the building of new steam plants in the
most economical location with reference to the mines. It involves the
utilization of hydro-electric power and it contemplates, finally, that
all the power produced in that zone, both steam and hydro-electric,
will, so to speak, go into one common reservoir, so that by the turning
of a button you can send it here, there, anywhere within that great
zone and thus secure the utilization of the maximum amount of power
with the least cost.
In that computation they make their figures on an eighty percent
load factor. But the maximum load factor that any hydro-electric
concern would figure on would be fifty percent and in New England,
24
where they say they are going to send this power, they cannot count
on more than thirty-five. But even at fifty percent this power, that
is going to be used to finance this project, is at once cut from a mil-
lion four hundred thousand to seven hundred thousand usable power,
or only three hundred and fifty thousand in the United States. Now,
before they launch the credit of the Government in support of this
project, on the theory that water power is going to pay for it, I say
it is necessary to have some further study. So much for that.
But that is not all. They have only scratched the surface of the
cost of this thing and I am not going to impugn their motives. Gov-
ernor Allen says he is bound for Liverpool. (Laughter.) Well, you
have a very uncertain voyage if you undertake to sail on any barge
that will navigate the Great Lakes with their limiting channels of
twenty feet, as now exist. They say it is unnecessary to consider the
cost of deepening those channels and harbors. The International
Joint Commission recommends that the cost of the Welland Canal
improvement shall be borne by the two Governments. There has not
much been said about that. Canada thought it was going to cost
fifty million dollars. It is probably going to cost at least seventy-
five and because I take it, it is because of that; I make or cast no
reflections upon our neighbor to the North I take it because of her
financial condition, the work on the Welland Canal is almost sus-
pended.
The project calls for twenty-five feet. In order to deepen it to
thirty feet and I say that is the minimum that any man in his senses
would think of if he is going to give Governor Allen the voyage that
he has been longing for so long nobody has estimated how much it
will cost to extend that five feet more, but what else? I said the
limiting depth of channels in the Great Lakes is twenty feet; they
vary twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two. Now, for some reason, they
have tried to keep away from that. They have said you have not got
to consider that. This International Joint Commission, which is said
to have said the last word, says it is necessary now to consider it.
They say that probably those channels will be deepened anyway,
sometime would have to be.
Every Board of Engineers now, I don't want to make a statement
that is not true; I think every Board of Engineers, and many have
been requested by Congress to report on the cost of deepening those
channels every Board, at least, whose report has come to my notice,
up to date, has said that the great cost of deepening those channels
would be way out of proportion to any benefit that could be derived.
When a fourteen-thousand-ton lake freighter, with its flat bottom,
without the necessity of providing the space for coal which an ocean
liner has to provide, when a fourteen-thousand-ton lake freighter can
navigate those channels, it is quite obvious that there is no pressing
need of having them deepened for the lake business.
But the other side, in their desperation, have undertaken to prove
that it is not necessary to deepen those channels. They want to take
Governor Allen to Liverpool and they say they can do it on ships that
25
will sail a twenty-foot channel. And this is the way they say, or this
is the way they figure : They have taken the tonnage of the ships as
shown by Lloyd's Register. They talk about this; this great Inter-
national Joint Commission say that they are tremendously impressed
by this fact. They say that a certain percentage, I think 70, of the
ships built during 1918 and 1919 had a draft of less than 25 feet
and a certain other percentage a draft of less than 30, and they figure
that a twenty-foot channel will be enough. Well, I happen to have
the report of Lloyd's Register of shipping and a note, right on the first
page, says that these figures take into account only merchant vessels
of one hundred tons gross and upwards. Every barge and scow that
has been built, capable of carrying one hundred tons, is taken into
account, and so they get this average of 70 percent being under twenty-
five foot draft. Now, I am sure that Governor Allen does not want
to take that voyage to Liverpool in a scow. (Laughter and applause.)
They say that a census shows that a large proportion of the ship-
ping that went through the Panama Canal could be accommodated,
not on a twenty-foot draft, but on a twenty-five foot draft. That
shipping is not analyzed. It is not shown what the character of
those ships was, or for what trade they were intended, and the fact
is lest I forget it, I want to mention it now, as showing the utter
worthlessness of this report of the International Joint Commission.
What did they do? They went over the country hearing the exag-
gerated statements of the proponents of this scheme on the one hand
and of the opponents of it on the other and I am willing to concede
that the opponents went fifty-fifty with the proponents in the matter
of exaggeration. (Laughter.) Then they reached their conclusions
without any independent investigation of their own, because they
said in their report that they employed statistical experts to collect
the figures. These are problems to be dealt with, not by statisticians
who know nothing but distances and averages, but by experts in their
several fields and there are many fields that I want to come to
before I get through.
I see I have got to hurry. I knew when I offered to let Governor
Allen go on that I could not cover this subject in an hour, but, as
usual, he was too smart for me. (Laughter.) Now, this that I am
talking about is a fair indication of the character of the evidence that
moved this International Commission, this evidence of averages taken
from Lloyds' Register; this evidence of averages from ships passing
through a given point. They did not have to take averages. They
had some evidence right before them which would have told them the
kind of freight steamers that would use it. They even mention tramps.
I am astonished that, with the vivid imagination of the Middle West
which has been aroused by the dream of the Mauretania and the
Leviathan and those great ocean liners, Brother Merrick is willing to
get his project down to tramps. (Laughter.) He says it is going to
accommodate the tramp steamers, of which there are many.
Yes, but the figures will show that the tramps, prior to the war,
were gradually disappearing from the seas. We are engaged in a
project that will take ten years to complete. The forces, the economic
26
forces, that were operating to drive the tramp from the seas will
again be brought into action and if not ten years from now, my vision,
at least and I hope that I can be credited with having some vision as
well as my friends on the other side sees the time when regular lines
of steamships and not tramps will be required; and let me tell them,
too, that this great expenditure will never be justified if only tramps
enter the lakes. Their sailings are too uncertain. They can only
accommodate a certain class of merchandise, and Governor Allen says
that they are looking for an outlet to the sea for two hundred millions
of tons. That shows something about his imagination. (Laughter.)
I call to your attention the fact that the total export and import ton-
nage of the United States in the year 1920, a banner year, was only
fifty-four million tons. (Applause.) And I suppose that Brother
Allen will be willing to admit that, even after this new Mediterranean
has been created, the Pacific, the Gulf and the Atlantic ports will
carry some of that tonnage. (Applause.)
The Commission had before them the evidence of the character of
vessels that would navigate these lakes, if any. Where would you go?
Would you go to Panama, or would you go to Montreal? If they are
going to extend the sailings of the ships up into the lakes, the first
ships whose sailings will be extended will be those which now go to
Montreal, won't they? Now, when the Commission sat in Montreal,
they received testimony of the draft of the vessels that had loaded
and departed from that port the month before, and I want to give it to
you ; the Banton, 23 feet 9 inches. Now, that vessel could creep along
through a channel of twenty-five feet, and this reminds me of another
inconsistency of our friends.
In order to put the camouflage upon this enterprise that it was not
going to cost anything, they have gone to great efforts to prove that
the present lake channels are ample twenty feet. But, when it comes
to computing the cost of transportation, they testify, all of them, that
these ocean freighters will go sailing through these restricted channels
with practically undiminished speed. Their estimates are biased. The
report of the International Commission shows that they found that
these ocean freighters would go through these restricted channels
without any appreciable lessening of speed, at from 8 to 10 miles
an hour, and yet, in every canal that is known, the Panama, the Suez,
the Kiel, in all these great canals, the speed is limited. They are not
permitted to go more than 6 miles, and, in many of them, not over
4 miles an hour. But, while in one breath they say the restricted
channels are going to mean no harm, in the next they say they can
get along with the present 20-foot channels in the lakes.
Now, to resume. The Banton could get along, but crawling, creep-
ing probably, with a foot of water under her keel. She ought to have
4 feet. You know, anybody who knows anything on the subject, the
great suction of these vessels, how clumsily they yield to their rudders
in such waters, their tendency to sheer and the like. They require
ample water under them, but that vessel with 23 feet 9 inches could
creep along on 25 feet. She could not get in through the 20-foot chan-
nel now. The Malita, 27 feet 6 inches. I must hurry. Without men-
27
tioning the names, I am just going to give the drafts: 25 feet 7 inches;
not 20, none of them; 23 feet 3 inches; 24 feet 4 inches; 26 feet; 25
feet 2 inches; 26 feet 3 inches; these are the drafts. Would anybody
dream of providing a channel for these ships and this canal wouldn't
be completed in 10 years which was under 30 feet?
I say that the very fact that these people are trying to rush this
proposition through upon the assertion that it only involves two hun-
dred and fifty millions of dollars; upon the superficial examination
that they have made; upon the assertion that it is not necessary to
consider the deeping of the channels of the Great Lakes, that fact
indicts their good faith. It shows that they are not willing to have
the facts examined. It shows that they are trying to commit this
government to something that neither they nor anybody else has com-
puted.
Now, then, I assert that a 30-foot channel is the very minimum that
anybody would suggest. What does that mean? It means deepening
the lake channels and harbors to 30 feet. Why didn't they make a
study of that? Governor Allen may say I made a statement that that
subject had not been investigated and he caught me up in a speech
that he made afterwards and called my attention to the fact that
Army engineers, I think in 1905, did make an estimate. They did.
In 1905 or 1906 they made an estimate that it would cost $25,000,000
to deepen the channels of the Great Lakes to 25 feet. They didn't
say how much it would cost to deepen the harbors correspondingly
and the approaches to the harbors. They said that it would cost many
millions more, but that the project was so indefensible that is not
their word that they did not make the estimates. How much would
it cost to deepen these channels and harbors to 30 feet? I do not
know. Governor Allen does not know. Nobody knows, because it has
not been investigated, but, if it would have cost $25,000,000 in 1905 to
get 25 feet, it would undoubtedly cost a hundred millions more to get
the 30 feet. But that is not all.
If Governor Allen is to have his dream realized, you have got to do
something else besides deepen the channels. Your terminals are pro-
vided for the particular class of business that they handle. Your
terminal, your freight-handling machinery, provided for that par-
ticular kind of tonnage, coal and ore and what packet business there
is, has been built up along little rivers in your harbors which would
be wholly inadequate for ocean commerce. If the Governor's dream
is to be realized, you have got to build at your lake harbors great
outer works, great breakwaters, and do a great amount of dredging
How much it would cost nobody knows, but you have got to construct
these great outer harbors to provide for ocean shipping. The Presi-
dent tells me that I have only five minutes more now. The greatest
part of this is lost.
GOVERNOR ALLEN: You don't get a minute. (Laughter.)
GOVERNOR MILLER: He says I don't get a minute. I want to go to
another subject. I have said enough here to indicate, gentlemen, the
vast expenditure that is involved, and, after you have deepened your
harbors, after you have used for docking purposes lands in Chicago,
28
for example and Mr. Merrick knows how valuable the water-front
property now used for other purposes has become still these vessels
would be of no use unless you have completely reconstructed your rail-
road terminals and you propose to make these railroads that now
can't provide you your box cars, spend millions, also. Undoubtedly, it
would take one hundred millions in the city of Chicago to rearrange
the railroad terminals to coordinate with water shipping. Now, I say,
before we go on with that project, let us find how much it will cost and
let us find whether the people who have got to bear the cost are
willing to do it.
I was going to tell Governor Allen for his own sake to get an outlet
to the sea. He now has a rail-haul to Chicago which I thinks costs 25
cents or more a bushel, doesn't it? By improving the Mississippi and
the Missouri Rivers he can get right at Kansas City a waterhaul, first
by barge to New Orleans and then by ship to Liverpool water all
the way and cut out his rail-haul to Chicago. (Applause and cheer-
ing.) I wanted to discuss that subject and to point out to him the
relief for the wheat growers of the West. He imagines four hundred
millions of people here. Well, if that imagination is justified, we will
certainly be importing and not exporting wheat. (Applause.) It may
be we will be exporting from these prairies of Western Canada, but I
am sectional enough to believe that we ought to take care of our
own products before we undertake to take care of those of ou**
neighbors. (Applause and cheering.) There is Brother Allen's solu-
tion, and I wanted to develop it further.
There is one other important subject that I must bring to your
attention and that is this : It has not even been suggested. It has not
been studied. The International Joint Commission was required to
study it. They were required to say what traffic, both incoming and
outgoing in kind and quantity, is likely to be carried upon the pro-
posed route, and so forth. For lack of time, I cut short the question.
Their answer is: "To this question also it is impossible to give a spe-
cific answer." And they say, further, that the Commission has so
much confidence in the virility and the resourcefulness of the people
of these two countries that it is certain that the traffic available for
the new waterway will rapidly increase. Well, now, apropos of that,
I say we want something besides vision. We want facts!
This Commission did not even consider the most important and the
most vital fact in this whole controversy, and that is this : I was going
to discuss that subject, but, to save time, I am going to assume for
the moment that these ocean ships that they are talking about will
sail up into the Great Lakes ; physically they could do it. I am going
to assume that transportation costs will be such that they could do it.
That is a matter that has not been proven, and I would like to talk
about it, but I can't. But, I say, assuming all of that, the question
still remains whether they would do it; and this is the question that
requires the most expert opinion, which has not yet even been con-
sulted. It is not transportation costs that determine the routes of
trade. That, in fact, is a minor factor. I read a speech of Congress-
man Nelson in Congress the other day in which he said that freight,
29
which should, logically, be shipped from Portland, Boston, Norfolk,
Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, Jacksonville, Tampa and Mobile
directly to foreign destinations, now proceeds by rail to New York
at great cost because it cannot obtain a ship to destination from the
port which should receive the traffic.
Why is it that the Port of New York carries such a large percentage
of the foreign trade? And we are going to spend five hundred mil-
lions, and more if it is necessary, to make that port serve the com-
merce of the country. (Applause and cheering.) One of the last things
I did before coming here was to sign a bill which puts an end to the
disputes and the jealousies that have prevented the proper develop-
ment of that port. I admit that it has been a sin that for so many
years the terminal expenses in New York have been so great. We
are going to put a stop to it, and we are not going to begin ten years
from now, but we have already begun. (Applause.) And we are going
to do it. Not to divert shipping from other ports. We want shipping
to go where it naturally should go. We want the Gulf ports to have
the shipping that is rightfully theirs. The export wheat of the future
of the region that the Governor comes from should economically go to
the Gulf ports, and it should go there by water and the water facili-
ties should be improved. (Applause.)
Mr. Nelson thought that the reason why exports continued through
New York was because the railroads went there. The fact is is my
time up? I must discuss this. I will have to take part of my seven
minutes. Wouldn't you give me a little?
GOVERNOR ALLEN: Yes, go ahead.
GOVERNOR MILLER: I must say a word about that, but I will take
part of my seven minutes.
GOVERNOR ALLEN : You add it to your seven minutes.
PRESIDENT SMALL: Under the arrangement of time agreed upon,
the Chair now recognizes Governor Allen for fifteen minutes.
GOVERNOR ALLEN: What could you think about the imagination of
a man who scoffs at the possibilities of the St. Lawrence and speaks
of the possibilities of the Mississippi River! What do you think of
the decision of the Port of New York to expend five hundred million
dollars on port facilities and then begins here with the fact that maybe
this great enterprise is going to cost a little more than the estimate
proclaimed? What do you think of that? My friends, everything
Governor Miller has said about this project contains no mention of
the possibilities of the project. Not one. He merely says to us that
maybe we are underestimating the cost. Well, maybe we are. But,
if it is to cost twice this much, the blessing it will bestow upon the
commerce of forty-three million people will not be too great a burden
for them to bear. (Applause.)
Why, he wonders if I have not been unduly imaginative touching
the demands of the future for export business. Elisha Lee, vice presi-
dent of the Pennsylvania Railroad, less than two weeks ago gave sta-
tistics to prove that every ten years the transportation demands in
30
this country have doubled, and Julius Barnes, the best informed wheat
shipper in the world, declares that, as the population of this country
has increased, the per capita production of wheat has increased.
Now, my friends, the process which this International Commission
has pursued in this matter is just exactly the same process that has
always been pursued, when Congress has appointed a great commis-
sion to do a task. They have said when they have recommended it,
that, because of the great importance of this project, because of the
great cost of it, they are making a preliminary report and they are
asking the Government to appoint for the canvass of their report a
board of experts, that they may do just exactly what Governor Miller
has asked to be done, but they say that, after an exhaustive survey
of the situation, in which they developed every possibility in it, they
are convinced that this is a feasible project.
Their summary says that the physical conditions are favorable for
the improvement of navigation which will be permanent and will have
low upkeep cost. They say that, in making this report, the engineers
have had the benefit of the very complete surveys made by the Deep
Waterways Board and of many surveys carried on in the last twenty
years by the Canadian Government and others, supplemented by much
work done under our direction and under that of the Canadian Gov-
ernment. They say that study was made of the variations of level,
the effects of use, the protection of banks, and so on, and so on. They
considered Governor Miller's Buffalo speech, in which he drew much
the same black picture he drew this afternoon. They had all that
before them; they had all this testimony which he presents before
them in the Montreal meeting, and, in spite of it all, they said, "We
think it is a feasible project and we recommend to the Congress that
they go forward with the project."
What more would you expect this International Commission to do?
They were not asked to work it out thoroughly. They were asked
to make the survey and they spent a year upon it and then they come
before Congress, having expended their time and used Government
money under an obligation to get at the facts, and they say, after all
this study, including the survey of the New York objections, "We
still believe this to be a feasible project."
Now, as to the discussion of the right to take from New York what
she does not possess at present and seems to have no immediate pur-
pose to create, the waterpower, surely New York, if we do create this
great extent of water power, would not expect us to give it to her for
nothing, would she? Oh, she might; but, would she, do you think, dis-
cussing the moral phase of it? (Laughter.) And, since this very valu-
able by-product of this great enterprise does create a horsepower as
large as that they claim, and nobody questions that capacity, if we do
thus create it, it is on the market and New York is the first bidder.
Surely she would not want it for nothing. Surely she would be willing
to pay for it a reasonable overhead.
I had expected to read here, but there are so many other things I
want to pay attention to, the report of Mr. Brady, the engineer of
the Westinghouse people, who declares that this power could be used
31
at a cost which would save New York today around ninety million dol-
lars a year and he figures it out as an engineer should. I would not
be interested in the figures, but he declares it to be a practical thing,
and that it would be a blessing. Why, the same argument that Gov-
ernor Miller has used about the lack of patronage for this power was
used when they created the Niagara hydro-electric power station, and
now they are doubling that.
Oh, friends, they stand here today to say there is nothing possible
in this country that costs more than a certain sum of money. Why,
if they could build a barge canal in the State of New York for one
hundred and sixty-five million dollars, who are they that they should
come now and say that you can't afford to spend two hundred and
fifty millions, and it might be three hundred millions, to create a use-
ful waterway out of the St. Lawrence? So I say, my friends, imagina-
tion has a great deal to do with this, and the imagination of those who
are behind this project does not begin to be the imagination of the
Spanish queen who pawned her jewels to send Columbus across the
ocean. (Applause.) We have always had imagination.
He talks to you a lot of words, but we fear he is becoming frivolous
when he talks about the Mauretania coming to Chicago. We never
expected that; never. Chicago has organized a grand opera company,
and has done well with that, but we never hope to see the Mauretania
there. We never did expect, Governor Miller, to get the Mauretania,
and in the report nothing is more clearly pointed out than that the
vessels that will use this great waterway are vessels of from seven
to eight thousand tons and more than seventy percent of the com-
merce of the world is carried in vessels of that size. (Applause.) You
wipe out the tramp steamer. You wipe out the best friend that the
far-flung lines of national endeavor have ever had.
Magnus Swenson, proprietor of a great steamship line, told me last
summer that the moment the engineers who build this canal declare
that it is ready for operation that moment his steamers would poke
their nose into the St. Lawrence. He is a practical sailorman, is
Magnus Swenson, who began as a boy before the mast and now owns
the great American-Norwegian Transatlantic Line. He has studied
the lakes all his life, and he says there is not a reason why this
canal of thirty-three miles should not be just as useful as any canal
that was ever built.
Every argument that Governor Miller has used here this afternoon
discouraging the proposition was used by those in England who op-
posed, from the standpoint of Liverpool, the building of the Man-
chester Canal. (Applause.) Every one of them. And Manchester,
which, when that canal was opened, had more vacant houses than
occupied houses, has multiplied her population five hundred percent
and Liverpool has not been injured in the meantime. Oh, the creative
power of transportation has wrought the miracle that transportation
always brings to pass.
Let me read you this: New York has not taken any toll, they
say. Why, I wish I had time to tell you some of the tolls that New
York does take. This is a way-bill. It is from a citizen of New York
32
who had to get from Nova Scotia some freight and he had heard
about the combination of water and rail, and so he said "Send it by
water and rail." Then he writes to me and says, "I do hope they will
put that dream through you are talking about at the Engineering
Society in New York." He said, "Here is a way-bill for some
freight I have recently paid. The whole bill amounts to four dollars
fifty-six cents a hundred, of which two dollars was paid for carting
the stuff into New York harbor. Half of it, practically." What is
that? That is a toll; a pretty dear toll, too.
Here in Chicago is an instance of the sort of business that could
be done. Here is a statement from Government reports showing the
amount of foreign business that was shipped and what we would
have saved on freight rates if we could have loaded it on bottoms in
the Chicago harbor without being obliged to pay the freight tariff to
New York. The figures are based on the rates that prevailed in
April, 1920, and the total amounts to $126,437,454.46. That was the
cost to transmit the food products of the Middle West to the Port of
New York for shipment. Now, my friends, we are merely claiming
that we could save a great quantity of this $126,000,000 if you might
unload this cargo upon these bottoms of boats that would sail from
there to Hamburg.
"Well," you say, "is this going to Hamburg?" I talked the day
before yesterday with the transportation manager of the Morris Pack-
ing Co. The month before they had shipped 6,000 tons to Germany
from their Chicago packing house, and the freight rate on the 6,000
tons between Chicago and New York was $84,000. If they could have
loaded these 6,000 tons on a 7,000-ton ship and sent them to Hamburg
direct, they would have saved a tremendous amount of that freight;
and who would have been benefited? The man who is trying now to
get his poor head again above the water of financial disaster, the man
who is engaged in the livestock business of the Middle West.
Well, he says, "I do not come here to represent New York." I am
glad to hear that. Because, if he says that New York does not object
to this on account of the New York interests, then New York has been
sadly misrepresented by her own boards of commerce, her state legis-
lature and her newspapers. Here are seven knocks on the St. Law-
rence Canal, beginning with dignified agencies, chambers of commerce,
New York legislature and the leading newspapers of New York, and
every one of them predicating their objection upon the damage it
would do to the harbor of New York. Now, it is perfectly all right
and proper to object to that, but you must not object to it under the
false assumption that you are just trying to save the Federal Govern-
ment from making an error. (Applause.)
I think the Governor pays entirely too much attention to the fear
that we are going to make the waterpower project pay for the cost of
the canal. Just as he makes the error of trying to make us believe
that we are going to spend six hours a mile going along a channel
which he would have us believe is eleven hundred miles long. It is
only thirty-three miles long. Don't get those thirty-three miles out
of mind. The Commission did not advise the Congress that they should
33
adopt, as the method of paying for this, the hydro-electric power.
They suggested that as one of the by-products, and, if New York
objects or the Congress objects, if there is a moral objection to paying
the overhead of this great enterprise in this fashion, the Middle West
will have no objection to considering the financing of it in some other
way. The Middle West is willing to pay her share of the cost of this
project. It wants the project. (Applause.)
The other objection, which, I think, constitutes the strongest point
he made, was the objection to going ahead without knowing more
about it. I have the same objection. And we will go ahead, the next
step being the creation by the Congress of the machinery to check up
this very able and exhaustive report of the Engineers and Commis-
sioners representing Canada and the United States, and, if the supe-
rior judgment of those men who will be appointed to check up that
report is in line with its recommendations, then the pledge of Con-
gress, when it chooses these men, is that we will go ahead with the
project.
Why, there is nothing different in this plan from that which pre-
vailed when they built the Panama Canal. The first commission did
not outline whether it was to be a sea-level canal or a lock canal. The
first decision was to build. And then we had not any money. We
had any amount of discussion as to whether it was to be a sea-level
or lock canal, but never after they began to discuss that were we
uncertain about the essential thing we wanted Congress to do. Shall
we attempt it or shall we not attempt it? Congress said, "There is
enough evidence before us to make us believe we can build the Panama
Canal, and, therefore, these men are authorized to proceed, and to
bring to Congress a working report."
This is not presumed to be a working report, and it is an unfair
advantage to take of these gentlemen when you say that they have
done a shallow job. Their report took into consideration everything
that Governor Miller has invited our attention to this afternoon.
There isn't a point he made, an objection he raised, that they have
not had before them many times. And yet, having heard it all, they
said to Congress, "It is our recommendation that you proceed with
this enterprise." Now, how much time, Mr. President?
PRESIDENT SMALL: It seems to be up.
GOVERNOR ALLEN : It seems to be up. Then it is up. I think I was
about through, anyway.
GOVERNOR MILLER: Proceed.
GOVERNOR ALLEN: You are very kind, Governor Miller. I only
want to correct one statement. We have from the head of this organi-
zation that the engineers who assisted this Commission did make
soundings. They did look into the character of the basement of the
canal. They did investigate the qualities of the rock, and, in
this report, I do find that they also estimated that the broadening of
the canal would cost $17,000,000. So they also treated that.
I am very glad to have had the opportunity to stand before this
great Congress in reference to this great project. It is not a question,
my friends, as to what it is going to cost. It isn't a question as to how
34
the cost is going to be met. It is a question as to the feasibility of
giving to 43,000,000 Americans the use of this perfectly possible enter-
prise. That is what we are here for. (Long continued applause.)
PRESIDENT SMALL: Governor Miller is now recognized for seven
minutes, and I hope the gentlemen will not leave the hall pending the
conclusion of the debate.
GOVERNOR MILLER: Discussions of this kind are useful. Men with
open minds who get together and talk about projects are likely to
come close together, and Governor Allen and I are very close together
at this moment, if I correctly understood what he had to say. Now,
in the first place, he has entirely misjudged while I say we are
nearly together, he has entirely misjudged the point of my argu-
ment. I agree with him that Queen Isabella did a splendid thing
when she pawned her jewels, but we are not living in the days of
Queen Isabella. Most people in those days believed that the world
was flat. (Laughter.) We know now that it is round. We know
the great forces that control the channels of trade. We know the
great engineering facts and factors, and all I have undertaken to
assert here this afternoon is not that we should not embark on this
project, but that we should first find out all of the relevant facts
before we decide what to do. (Applause.)
I am glad I have got an admission from Governor Allen that it may
cost possibly twice as much, but this is not the point. I agree with
him that, if it will do what he thinks it will do, it does not matter what
the cost will be. What I have contended for is that we should first
find out all of the elements of the cost; find out how it is to be
financed; whether the method proposed is practical; whether the
results accomplished will be feasible ; and then, when those factors are
determined, we can decide whether to go ahead or not.
Now, I wanted to mention one other subject of investigation which
has been entirely overlooked, and which is probably the controlling
factor on the question of feasibility. I said, just before I sat down,
that transportation costs and distances do not determine routes of
trade. I had read Congressman Nelson's complaint that commerce
still goes through the Port of New York, although, as you know, there
is a differential, a railroad rate differential, in favor of the other
Atlantic ports. Congressman Nelson thought freight goes to New
York because the railroads go there. But you know that the rail-
roads go to the other ports as well. That is not the reason. Now, let
me tell you very briefly what this problem is and it has never been
considered by these gentlemen.
There are only four great ports of world trade New York, London,
Liverpool and Hamburg. How does it happen that there are only
four? Because of transportation cost? No, it is because the great
machinery of commerce, the great trade agencies, have their centers
in those four places, from which they radiate to all the other ports
of the world. This 200,000,000 tons that Governor Allen talked about
js not made up of the bulky freight. It is made up of package freight,
35
of small parcels that are assembled from various places. And, do you
know that merchandise will go thousands of miles out of its way in
order to reach a center of distribution like Hamburg or London or
Liverpool or New York, and from there will be assorted and redis-
tributed and sent again over the arteries of trade that center there?
It takes years; it takes money, and immense sums of money, to build
up the trade organizations which control routes of commerce. The
fact is, that merchandise, at this very day, is shipped from Venezuela
to New York city and then redistributed and shipped by rail right to
the Gulf ports, when they could have a water route directly from
Venezuela to those ports.
Governor Allen complains because somebody has said that there
was a route of a thousand miles. I suppose that somebody was talk-
ing about the route for the entire distance, either to Duluth or to
Chicago from Montreal, but is he quite fair when he says that the
narrow channels would be only 35 miles? Thirty-five or fifty miles
which was it? I have not computed all the channels, but the channel
between Lake Erie and Lake Huron and Lake Superior and the
channels of the St. Lawrence would run into hundreds of miles and
not 35 miles. No doubt the Governor made that statement without
intending to, but that is a bagatelle. The question is, assuming all
of these other things, is there any reason to suppose that the ma-
chinery of business would be centered in these lakes ports which has
not yet been centered in other ocean ports? That is a matter for
expert opinion of men who understand this problem. I do not pretend
to understand it. Why does the Port of New York retain its com-
merce? Because the centers of distribution are there. Because these
great trade agencies have been built up, with their connections in all
parts of the world. New York retains her shipping against a great
differential in favor of these other Atlantic ports, Norfolk and Balti-
more and Philadelphia and Boston. Why? It is because these centers
of trade that I speak of have been built up there. Is there any reason
to believe that the Gulf ports would be able to establish I mean the
Lake ports would be able to establish such centers of trade if these
Atlantic ports now are unable to do so?
But that is not all. Assuming for the moment and I have had
to assume assume that, in a matter of transportation costs, these
ocean steamers would enter the Great Lakes; assume that we have
spent, on Governor Allen's admission, not two hundred and fifty but
five hundred millions on this project; assume, in addition, that the
Lake cities had spent anywhere from one to two hundred millions
apiece to improve their terminals; assume that the railroads could be
induced to spend the millions necessary to co-ordinate the terminal
rail facilities with the water facilities; assuming all that, what rea-
son is there to suppose that the Lake ports and there are some nar-
row channels could build up these great trade agencies? I say that
that must be made the subject of expert study.
But one more word: What would it mean to extend these facilities,
the physical as well as the commercial, to the Lake ports? It would
mean that the business houses who did it would have to maintain two
such agencies, because they would be in ports that would be cut off
from the ocean at least five months of the year. I do not deny the
fact that the Barge Canal is frozen over five months in the year.
I do not offer the Barge Canal as a substitute for the St. Lawrence
route. It is not a substitute; it can only handle economically bulk
commodities like grain. But you are proposing to divert ocean ship-
ping to ports which are closed by ice five months in the year. Is there
any certainty that you can establish those great centers of business
in order to justify that?
What does it mean? They say that the railroads are now crippled.
Would they not have to rely upon the railroads for the other five
months in the year? You can relieve the railroads of seasonable busi-
ness by water transportation, by the improvement of our inland rivers,
by shipping over the Barge Canal, if you care to do so; you can
relieve the railroads of that peak business. But this 200,000,000 of
tons, that the Governor talks about, must move twelve months in the
year, and, while complaining on the one hand that the railroads upon
which they must rely for five months are now so crippled that they
cannot render service, they propose a project that would still further
cripple the railroads upon which, in the last analysis, they must rely
for at least five months in the year. (Applause.)
Now, may I just state my point of agreement with the Governor?
(Laughter.) The Governor says this is all preliminary. If it is, well
and good. I think brother Craig will get after you, because he says
that there must be action this winter by Congress. I agree with the
Governor that we have not got through with the preliminary stage.
We have got down to the point where we at least know what the
factors are that are to be studied. That is as far as we have gone.
I agree with him, and I ask you to take note of his admission. He
says the next step is to have Congress arrange for expert investiga-
tion of these subjects.
GOVERNOR ALLEN: Oh, no, no! Of the methods of building!
GOVERNOR MILLER: Ah! I was afraid there was a joker in that! I
knew he would want to hedge when I reminded him of Craig! (Ap-
plause.) No, no! He evidently still sticks to it. "We must commit
ourselves to the project now and investigate afterwards."
I say I am willing to pledge the support of anybody whom I have a
right to speak for in favor of a proposal like this : Let Congress pro-
vide for a new expert investigation of this subject, not in a premili-
nary way, but in a final way, to determine these various factors. Let
them employ experts impartial experts not the kind that your Great
Lakes Tidewater Association called before the Committee not the
kind who know nothing but distances and averages. Let them employ
impartial experts who understand these factors engineering experts
who understand engineering factors navigation experts who under-
stand the navigation problems water power experts who understand
the water power problem commercial experts who are familiar with
these great agencies, the commercial agencies which control the cen-
37
ters and routes of trade distribution employ men who understand
these subjects.
GOVERNOR ALLEN: Governor Miller, since you are using a little
more than your allotment of time, will you let me ask you a question?
GOVERNOR MILLER: Certainly.
GOVERNOR ALLEN: Is it your contention that this International
Commission called before it none of that character of testimony?
GOVERNOR MILLER: None that I know of. I am willing to admit
that I have not read all the testimony. It is a stack at least that
high (indicating about seven feet).
GOVERNOR ALLEN: Isn't it possible that some of it may have been
from intelligent sources, in a stack that high?
GOVERNOR MILLER: I don't say it is not from intelligent sources.
I say, Governor, the evidence that was produced, on both sides, was
the evidence of men who were committed in advance. (Applause.) It
was the testimony of men produced by the various Chambers of Com-
merce and by various organizations like your Great Lakes-Tide-
water Association, the evidence of men committed on the project;
and I say that that character of evidence is not the kind of evidence
upon which to base a conclusion. (Applause.) And what I am willing
to stand for is that Congress shall provide for an investigation of
this character. Appropriate a million dollars I don't think that is
enough appropriate two millions of dollars, if you will. The resolu-
tion before us is for a million. Appropriate any sum whatever is
necessary to have the most thorough investigation made by impartial
experts. I don't want to select them. I say that Brother Craig should
not select them. (Applause.) Let them be selected by official sources.
And, after all of the facts have been developed, if these facts indi-
cate that this project is feasible, I pledge my support to it, no matter
what it costs! (Applause and shouting all rising.)
PRESIDENT SMALL: The Chair makes this statement in justice to
the occasion. We have had a very striking illustration of a most
delightful disposition of American character this afternoon, the dispo-
sition to hear both sides, to treat both sides courteously and to listen
to both attentively. And, speaking for you, as I think I may, I wish
to thank each of these three gentlemen for coming here and partici-
pating in this discussion. It has been enlightening. It has been edu-
cational, and will be regarded as a distinct contribution to this
debatable subject. (Applause.)
Merrick, Harry Hopkins
Joint debate on the St.
Lawrence River ship channel
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