Ditch Resurrected

The ghost of the Florida Ship Canal, ten years older, stalked the U.S. Senate last week. It was no longer a $200,000,000 Presidential pump-priming scheme. With its boondoggling finery removed, the great dead ditch was now a $44,000,000 barge canal with a wartime-living excuse: to mitigate the East Coast oil shortage. But it raised the same old political ruckus--and the pros & cons were still dead white and coal black.

Said the pros: the canal could be built in only ten months, would cost no more than $44,000,000, would take almost no scarce materials. Said the cons: the canal would take some three years to finish, would cost much more than its proponents figured, would chew up from two to three times as much critical material and twelve times the operating manpower that northern pipelines would take. The Citizens Emergency Committee for Eastern Transportation Relief came out for the ditch. The Citizens Emergency Committee on Non-Defense Expenditures came out against it. Plain citizens were confused, as usual.

Down with the Ditch. Franklin Roosevelt first tried to carve a canal across Florida's 172-mile neck in 1935, with $5,400,000 of relief money. By 1936 the money was gone, the canal was still a useless ten-mile ditch rapidly filling with sand and silt. In 1937 and again in 1939 the ditch came up for review--and more money--in Congress, and got the cold shoulder. At that time, one of the most vociferous opponents of the Great Boondoggle was New Hampshire's proud, loud Senator Styles Bridges.

But last summer the East Coast oil shortage changed everything, including Senator Bridges' mind. As a cheaper barge canal, the project squeaked through Congress with the aid of votes from Eastern Republicans with about-to-be-cold constituents and Midwestern Democrats with about-to-be-curtailed oil and gas production.

When it came to raising the money, the House Appropriations Committee turned the ditch down again last fortnight, 21-to-19. This penny-pinching attitude followed last-minute testimony from George A. Wilson, assistant to Petroleum Administrator Harold Ickes. Wilson, sent to the Hill to torpedo the canal and to plug for pipelines, was unfortunately required to be moderately optimistic about the East Coast fuel situation for next fall. Subsequently, as the No. 1 crier of "Wolf! Wolf!" his boss has been putting out alarmed statements that next winter's oil situation may be tough (though it should be better) because nobody knows what military needs will be. But Honest Harold, who, as Interior Secretary, loves pipelines more than canals, won his point--for the moment.

Up with the Ditch. The pro-ditchers would not be downed, and they had new support. Their big ace was none other than Senator Bridges. His chilly constituents had convinced him. Last week he spark-plugged a Senate move to override the House action, to attach the Florida barge-canal appropriation to a War Department appropriations bill.

Senator Bridges and his cohorts claimed White House support, because an Administration wheel horse, Texas' Senator Tom Connally, was for them. Franklin Roosevelt was silent.

The Pay-Off. This week the Senators will try to push the ditch through, despite Harold Ickes. But then, if the House also changes its mind, the payoff must still come from WPB: only WPB can release the materials to build the canal, the barges, the tugs.

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