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Last Labor Day 233 unhappy vacationists bound from New Orleans to New York aboard the S. S. Dixie found themselves caught between life and death when a hurricane grounded that Morgan liner on French Reef in the Florida Keys (TIME, Sept. 16). Next morning in Washington President Roosevelt, master of the psychological moment, announced that $5,000,000 in relief money would be spent in starting a trans-Florida ship canal that would forever make it unnecessary for seagoers to risk their lives in circumnavigating Florida's long, hurricane-blistered thumb.

The Spaniards talked about a canal across the northern part of Florida 150 years ago. General Andrew Jackson, first U. S. Governor of the Territory of Florida, was enthusiastic over the canal idea. President John Quincy Adams, Jackson's political rival, went so far as to have Army engineers survey a route. Generations passed and in 1930 Florida Congressmen got a bill passed for more surveys. In the last six years Army engineers have spent upwards of $300,000 examining 27 possible routes for the canal. After President Roosevelt's inauguration, Floridians appealed to RFC for a canal loan, then to PWA, finally to WPA, all without success until the September hurricane blew the Dixie into big black headlines throughout the U. S.

When President Roosevelt announced that the canal would be started at once even Florida gaped with astonishment. Most of the State had always assumed that the canal was a crackbrained project which a few boosters promoted for profit or publicity. Those who knew anything about the surveys understood that all the official reports made on the canal had been adverse; that the canal would cost $200,000,000 or more; that with interest at even 2% on the investment, the waterway would never pay for itself; that with no interest, tolls would pay for the investment only after about 80 years.

Canal boosters, mostly from North Florida, pooh-poohed these figures. The City of Jacksonville hired a local firm of engineers named Hills & Youngberg to make another survey for a fee reported to be $30,000. Hills & Youngberg, as expected, brought in a report steaming with encouragement: such a canal was quite practical; it would cost only $100,000,000; it would easily pay for itself in practically no time at all; it would cut 400 treacherous sea miles from the distance between North-Atlantic ports and Gulf of Mexico ports.

Most valuable of Hills & Youngberg's contributions to the canal cause was Engineer George B. Hills himself, who also happened to be the New Deal's dispenser of patronage in Florida. Last August when the canal project seemed virtually dead, Politician Hills took 60 canal boosters to Washington. There they buttonholed Senator Duncan Upshaw Fletcher, a Jacksonville man who up to that time had shown no great enthusiasm for a canal across his State. In a tight political spot,

Senator Fletcher bundled his 76 years into a taxicab, went to the White House to see Franklin Roosevelt. Whether Senator Fletcher's call or Mr. Hills's political pressure elsewhere turned the trick, the fact remained that, day after the Dixie grounded on French Reef, Franklin Roosevelt opened the canal game with an ante of $5,000,000.

Two days later Lieut. Colonel Brehon Somervell of the Army Engineers arrived in Florida to begin work. Then for the first time Florida really woke up to what was going to happen. The canal would take route 13-6: Beginning at the mouth of the St. Johns on the Atlantic it would follow that river inland to Jacksonville and south 64 miles to Palatka at the head of navigation. A few miles south of Palatka, the waterway would turn westward along the Ocklawaha, a St. Johns tributary twistier than the famed Meander. From this stream near Ocala the canal would cut west across dry land for 30 miles to a point about 20 miles from the Gulf. There it would pick up the Withlacoochee, follow its course down to the Gulf at Port Inglis. Total length of the canal: 200 miles, including the sea approaches, twice that of Suez, four times that of Panama. Channel depth: 30 ft. Total excavation: 570,000,000 cubic yards, about twice that of Panama. Total construction time: six years. Total estimated cost: $146,000,000 (30% of Panama). Florida's will be a sea level canal (like Suez), not a lock canal (like Panama). It was estimated a lock canal would cost an extra $100,000,000. Finally, to avoid the question of whether the canal could pay for itself, it was decided to make it free to shipping.

Engineer Somervell wasted no time. Within two weeks President Roosevelt pressed a button at Hyde Park, which exploded a dynamite charge which shot a fountain of Florida earth skyward. Gangs of WPA workers and mules were set to cleaning the right of way. Just outside Ocala, Camp Roosevelt sprang into being as a huge construction base. The counties along the route formed a Florida Ship Canal Authority, voted a $1,500,000 bond issue to buy the right of way, a mile wide from Palatka to the Gulf. By last week 23.000 of the necessary 65.000 acres were acquired or in process of acquisition, 6,600 men were at work, excavation was proceeding at 100,000 cubic yards a day.

Last week the diggers were uncertain whether they would ever finish their job. Their first $5,000,000 had run out before Jan. 1, and a piddling $200,000 allotment made in January has barely kept them going. It was distinctly discouraging last week when the House Appropriations Committee reported to the floor a $543,341,506 Army supply bill, largest in peacetime history, which failed to include $29,000,000 which President Roosevelt had asked for the canal and four other non-military enterprises. The committee explained somewhat lamely that its omission of this item was not to be construed as an outright abandonment of the projects concerned, that the money might be included in a Deficiency Bill "before adjournment." Senator Fletcher, now a defender of the canal whether he likes it or not, roared that the committee had "played into the hands of the Republicans," said he would make every effort to have the $29,000,000 promptly restored by amendment.

Meanwhile the Senate Commerce Committee started to consider investigating the whole project. Senator Fletcher was doing his best to preserve the canal's good name while Senator Vandenberg of Michigan was producing considerable damaging evidence against it.

The trouble was that no sooner had Lieut. Colonel Somervell told Florida what was going to happen than northern Florida began to rejoice and southern Florida to complain. Tampa growled because it feared it would lose its pre-eminence as Florida's west coast port, but Tampa's growls were hardly heard in the louder protests of fruit and vegetable growers south of the canal route.

The reason for these outcries was largely geological. Florida gets its rain in summer, but it grows its money crops, oranges, grapefruit, tangerines, avocados, celery, spinach, other truck, by irrigation in winter. Most of the water in central and southern Florida comes out of the "Ocala limestone." This dome-shaped stratum of rock comes to the surface only near Ocala, but it spreads out under all of Florida, is 100 ft. below sea level in the neighborhood of Orlando, 300 ft. below at St. Augustine. Winter rains around Ocala seep into the limestone which serves as a sort of natural reservoir under most of the State. By drilling wells to the limestone, water can be tapped and in many places brought to the surface like a stream from a firehose. So much water flows through the limestone that, for example, Silver Springs, close to Ocala, pours out 400,000,000 gal. per day, about as much as New York City consumes in 24 hours.

Near Ocala the water level in the limestone is 40 ft. above sea level. From the point where the canal cuts into the limestone south of Palatka to the Gulf, the bottom of the canal will be over 30 ft. below sea level. Thus the question, important to all of Florida south of the canal, arises: What is to prevent the canal from acting as a drainage ditch to carry off water to a depth of 70 ft. below the present water table? Army engineers confidently say they will plug up the leaks, prevent the drainage, not lower the water except in wells close to the canal. Florida's state geologist declared that he could not see why the effects would be limited to areas close to the canal. In places the fresh water had in late years already shown signs of failing and salt water was taking its place. Truck farmers and fruit growers rose in alarm. They formed the Central & South Florida Water Conservation Committee with headquarters at Sanford. They published large advertisements, "What Will You Do Without Water?" They wrote to the President, were answered by a White House clerk. They wrote to the War Department, were answered by publicity releases saying that the canal was going right ahead. Then they began writing to Congressmen. Thus Senator Van denberg heard their far-away cry for help, demanded an investigation which was the subject of last week's hearings.

Senator Vandenberg produced letters from numerous shipping companies declaring that, even if the canal is free, they will not use it because the expense and trouble of employing canal pilots, the risk of damage to ships in transit and increased costs of insurance would outweigh the saving in time. To show that Florida's geologist was not alone in his opinion, Senator Vandenberg next produced a letter by Harry Slattery, personal assistant to Secretary of the Interior Ickes. Said the letter: "Unless the canal could be effectively sealed throughout many miles of its course, a procedure presenting difficulties that appear to be practically insurmountable, it would inevitably drain enormous quantities of water from the limestone, would lower the water level in it. ...

"Moreover, after an unlined sea-level canal, with the passage of time, had drained down the fresh water now in the limestone, ocean water, particularly from the western end, would tend to enter the canal at high tide and to seep into the limestone along the canal banks and thus to contaminate its fresh waters." According to Mr. Slattery, the U. S. Geological Survey was of this opinion.

Then Secretary Ickes was called to testify in person. Said he with emphasis:

"This is a War Department project."

"How does it happen that it isn't a PWA project?"

"Because we didn't approve it."

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