The Plunge

Where previous Congresses for 40 years have merely wetted a toe and walked away, the House of Representatives last week took a momentous plunge: it approved the St. Lawrence Seaway project.

Since the Senate did likewise last January, the final political obstacle was removed from the great engineering dream which would make seaports of such cities as Toledo, Buffalo and Toronto.

Ever since he became a member of the old Rivers & Harbors Committee in 1933, Michigan's Congressman George Anthony Dondero has championed the seaway. As Public Works Committee chairman, he steered the bill through the House this year despite continued opposition from Atlantic and Gulf ports and from the railroad interests. Two recent developments finally dispelled congressional timidity: 1) the steel industry's ever-growing dependence on Labrador ore, which could be cut off by enemy submarines as long as it must be shipped through East Coast ports, and 2) Canada's decision to build the seaway by itself unless the U.S. joins now.

When victory came, on a vote of 241 to 158, Speaker Joe Martin handed his gavel to Dondero and said: "Here. After 20 years, you deserve it." Later, old (70) George Dondero happily said, "At that moment, I was up in the clouds."

Dondero's bill calls for a 27-ft. channel in the St. Lawrence, deep enough for medium-size seagoing vessels. Probable cost:* to Canada, $200 million; to the

U.S., $105 million, which the Treasury expects to recoup from toll charges. Eventually, by dredging the Detroit, St. Clair and St. Mary's rivers, ocean shipping may be able to reach Duluth and Canadian towns in the western reaches of Lake Superior.

This week President Eisenhower is expected to sign the bill into law and start setting up the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corp. to handle negotiations with Canada and supervise construction. Six years from now, if all goes well, ocean freighters will be churning upstream from Montreal.

Last week the Senate:

P: Resolved, without dissent, to set up a chapel in the Capitol. Explained Oklahoma's Democrat Mike Monroney, the project's sponsor, "We've got Turkish baths, private dining rooms and automatic-typewriting rooms, but no place to pray."

P: Shelved, 50-42, Administration-sponsored amendments to the Taft-Hartley Act. Arrayed against the bill were 46 Democrats. Wayne Morse and three Republicans (Nevada's saturnine George Malone, both North Dakota Senators--pro-laborite William Langer and anti-laborite Milton Young). The vote was a blow to the Eisenhower legislative program. But it also exposed Democrats to the charge of voting in favor of a Taft-Hartley status quo.

* Not including the $600 million hydroelectric power project which will be built jointly by Ontario and New York.

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