Word: canals
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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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...
...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...
...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...
...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...