Seaway: In the Lobby

Businessmen, lobbyists and experts last week braved shirt-melting heat and the House Rivers & Harbors Committee to have their say about one of the great power projects which Franklin Roosevelt promised when he campaigned in 1932.

Unlike Grand Coulee and TVA, the St. Lawrence is still a project.

A Roosevelt dream, the Seaway is not a Roosevelt idea. Joint U.S.-Canadian palavers to deepen the St. Lawrence began in 1895. Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover plumped for the Seaway with zero results. President Roosevelt, defeated when in 1934 he sent the Senate a Seaway Treaty (which needed a two-thirds vote), this time sent it to Congress as an "agreement" (needing only majority vote) and tagged it, like everything else in 1941, a measure for national defense.

Geographically, the Seaway is the biggest of all New Deal enterprises. In the 2,351 miles between the grain elevators and ore docks of Duluth and the broad mouth of the St. Lawrence, the inland waters drop 602 feet, roar over rapids, dodge many an island. The Seaway project would make these waters a marine highway at least 27 feet deep, so that ocean vessels could sail from Lake ports to the whole maritime world. This would require at least 18 big locks, many canals, much dredging. Estimated cost, including facilities already built: $379,252,000--about the cost of the Panama Canal.

Because Mr. Roosevelt believes naval power on salt water and electrical power from fresh water will determine the future of the U.S., the power phase of the project now ranks with the navigation phase. To yoke the river's great flow (220,000 cubic feet per second) two huge dams would be thrown up in the International Rapids southwest of Montreal (see cut). Here two titanic stations would harness 820,000 kilowatts of electricity (Grand Coulee: 1,944,000 kilowatts), half for the U.S., half for Canada. Estimated cost of power development only: $200,000,000.

Thus, total planned cost of power-seaway project is $579,000,000. Of this, Canada is to pay $277,000,000 (including credit of $133,000,000 for completed Welland Canal around Niagara Falls); the U.S. $302,000,000 (including credit of $17,000,000). Canada's cautious Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King wangled a good deal: her part of the work need not be completed before 1949; if war costs are too high, she can take even longer. Thus, if the U.S. wants the project now, she must foot all the bills, at least temporarily.

Navigation. For seven years the Seaway has been a storm center. From New York to Chicago, from Boston to New Orleans, victims real and imaginary have yelled against it. At last week's hearing, Frank S. Davis, of Boston's Maritime Association, pictured Boston's ships and docks deserted and rusting while rubber and wood pulp went through the Seaway.

Mayor Thomas Rolling of Buffalo (now a rail-lake transshipment point) told how

15,000 Buffalo dock workers would lose their jobs. A New Orleans representative said the project would damage the South's biggest port.

Railroad men blasted the Seaway from every side. Their main fear: loss of profitable petroleum, coal and automobile traffic (on the assumption that a new transport medium will divert more traffic than it will generate). Last week an 85-year-old pro-Seaway lobbyist (for Minnesota) named J. Adam Bede, who was a Congressman in 1903-09, remarked: "Aw, I've heard all this before. ... I remember when the railroad people testified that the transcontinental rails would turn to rust if we built the Panama Canal." But like the Panama Canal, the Seaway would cut transportation costs. Proponents have argued, for example, that automobiles might move from Detroit to Los Angeles at a saving of $84.94 a ton. One friendly source--assuming total Seaway export-import traffic of 11,500,000 tons a year--estimates possible savings to shippers (on a list of various commodities) as high as $78,000,000 a year. Other estimates are as low as $8,000,000.

Even shipping lines are potshotting the Seaway. The Atlantic States Shippers Advisory Board claims: 1) only 5% of U.S. ships over 2,000 tons could use the Seaway; 2) only 30% of foreign ships over 2,000 tons could navigate it; 3) only the smallest U.S. Naval craft could use it.

Reply proponents: 1) based on Dec. 31, 1939 statistics, 71% of the vessels, 59% of the tonnage of the world merchant fleet could go through; 2) 65% of U.S. freighters, 56% of U.S. tonnage could use it; 3) of the U.S. Navy, only battleships and aircraft carriers would be excluded.

Big trouble with these figures is while 1939 ships are sinking fast, 1941 ships are getting bigger. Of 384 ships abuilding in the Maritime Commission's emergency program, only around 30 could keep their keels off the Seaway bottom.

Power. The International Section generators cannot be furnishing power before 1945. But with TVA and Bonneville working overtime on aluminum production, the Seaway's power possibilities look unusually inviting in 1941. That industrial New York State needs more power is plain. By 1942 its power capacity will be 5,266.000 kw.; but 1944 demand (not counting that of two aluminum plants proposed last week--see p. 28) is estimated at 5,176,000 kw. by the New York State Power Authority, which calls this slender margin "unthinkable."

As a "defense" project, the Seaway's best point is that shipbuilders' ways at Ashtabula and Lorain on the Great Lakes could be put to work on ocean vessels in a couple of years. The Navy is already building .small submarines at Manitowoc, Wis. Said Assistant Secretary of State Adolf A. Berle Jr.: "Should the Axis powers be victorious, they would commence a shipbuilding race against the U.S. with the shipbuilding facilities of the entire European coasts, which are several times larger than our own. In that event. . . ."

Help or Hindrance? The Seaway is one of those vast, mountain-skipping ideas that most Americans instinctively like, and that seem to swallow the objections of interested parties like a century of U.S. history. Yet Americans are also logical, and in 1941 the logical question about such a project is: does it help or hinder defense? Whatever it does to rail traffic, the Seaway job must divert men and materials from the manufacture of planes, guns, ships.

Army engineers figure the Seaway would require 10,000 men (mostly unskilled), 84,000,000 board feet of lumber (3% of 1940's record output), 130,000 tons of steel (around one half day's U.S. output), 6,650,000 bbl. of cement (5.1% of 1940--5 output). A sharper squeeze would be felt when builders start after dredges, pneumatic hammers, giant cranes, electrical equipment, all now as scarce as they were plentiful five years ago.

After being kicked around for 46 years, the Seaway strikes an awkward pose as an emergency measure in 1941. But the real question is how it will look in 1945.

Does U.S. defense more urgently need the arms and other material which might otherwise be available in 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944 than it needs 820,000 kilowatts of electricity and an enlarged cross-country transport system in 1945? That is a technical and strategic question--a tough one --to which no one has yet attempted to give a detailed answer.

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