Billion-Dollar Beaver

Beaverishness on a gigantic scale was manifest last week when President Hoover, energetic engineer, unfolded at Cincinnati his administration's plan for developing U. S. inland waterways into one vast closeknit system of cheap transportation. The same instinct which sets him to building toy dams and clearing out rock-choked channels in tiny mountain streams moved him to advocate a river improvement policy which will cost approximately a billion dollars.

The occasion for this declaration of policy was the completion of the canalization of the Ohio River from Pittsburgh, Pa., to Cairo, Ill. (967 mi.). Fifty wicket locks now maintain a nine-foot all-year channel down this historic stream, first traversed (1669) by Explorer La Salle, admired by Surveyor George Washington, developed by President James Monroe. Into its brown waters have been poured $150,000,000 to permit stumpy little tugs to haul 50 million tons of coal, iron, gravel and sand on steel barges back and forth each year.

The Hoover program: 1). A consolidation of inland waterways into one system, with no more "patchwork of disconnected local improvements [which] has in the past been the sink for hundreds of millions of public money."

2). Development of the Mississippi as the north-south trunk line and the "modernization" of its tributaries, to create a 9,000-mi. water transportation system in the heart of the U. S. Of this, 3,800 mi. now have a channel six feet deep or better, leaving 5,000 mi. for U. S. development Chief tributaries for improvement: Illinois (Chicago-to-the-Gulf route), Missouri (high into the wheat country), Arkansas (west to the oil fields), Tennessee (through the coal lands). Time limit: five years.

3). Great Lakes-St. Lawrence seaway "whenever our Canadian friends have overcome those difficulties that lie in the path." Time: ten years. Cost: "After we have disposed of the electrical power, we could contract the entire construction for less than $200,000,000 divided between the two Governments."

4). Channel improvements in the Great Lakes with stabilization of their levels.

5). Addition of 1,000 mi. to the existing 746 mi. of intracoastal canals. Time: less than ten years.

6). Re-examination of the Mississippi Flood Control Plan, with possible readjustments of floodways below the Arkansas.

7). "Unceasing development of our harbors and the littoral waterways."

These combined projects equal about three Panama Canals. But, warned President Hoover, their completion "is not the dream of the visionaries--it is the march of the Nation." To their construction he pledged himself "with all the expedition which sound engineering will permit."

Costs. Today the U. S. is spending $50,000,000 per year on river and harbor development, $35,000,000 on flood control. President Hoover predicted that his program could be undertaken and carried through by the expenditure of only an additional $10,000,000 per year -- or $20,000,000 if the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence seaway were included.

Where the money might come from: "This annual increase is equal to the cost of one-half of one battleship. If we are so fortunate as to save this annual outlay on naval construction as the result of the forthcoming naval conference in London, nothing could be a finer or more vivid conversion of swords into plowshares."

Objections. Nipped by freight competition, railroad executives have in the past been the chief critics of the Government's waterway development program. Last fortnight at the Pittsburgh canal ceremony was observed a significant change. Six railroad presidents (Pennsylvania, New York Central, Baltimore & Ohio, Erie, Chesapeake & Ohio, Pittsburgh & West Virginia) attended to pledge cooperation. Suggested was the formation of an American Council of Transportation headed by Secretary of Commerce Lament.

Objectors among rail men to the President's program, however, were still to be found at a meeting of the Associated Traffic Clubs of America at St. Louis. There Henry Albert Palmer of Chicago, chairman of the association's board and editor of Traffic World, cried vehemently: "From every aspect the government's policy on waterway expenditures is unfair, unsound and immoral. I can think of no reason why President Hoover should take the stand he has. Perhaps it is because he is an engineer by profession. He seems to be regarded as a sort of temporal Pope --infallible."