Word: seaway
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Biggest new reason the President advanced for the Seaway was to aid shipping and shipbuilding. "The world's merchant tonnage is diminishing at the rate of thousands of tons a month. . . . Seacoast shipyards are already overtaxed with uncompleted construction. . . . We hope that the world situation may soon improve. But we are bound to be prepared for a long period of possible danger. Who can say with assurance that we shall not need for our defense or peaceful pursuits every possible shipbuilding resource, particularly those that exist and may be developed in the interior of our country? ... I am preparing...
...violent outcry followed his announcement. Railroad representatives were depressed by the news, which they took as one more blow at rail transportation. The executive secretary of the National Coal Association urged that defense power needs be met with quickly constructed coal-burning steam plants, since the Seaway would be years abuilding. The Middle West, which for years wanted the Seaway, imagining grandiose pictures of ocean liners docking at Chicago and Cleveland, has cooled off. Its big export trade has fallen off, its agriculture is already aided by farm benefit payments...
...which draw a minimum of 26 feet) to be built on the Lakes, once naval yards were constructed. But it would also mean deepening Lake harbors (estimated cost: by opponents, $250,000,000; by supporters, $10,000,000). Another difficulty is that for five winter months each year the Seaway is not navigable; warships completed in Lake yards during the winter would be locked in until the spring thaw. Said the New York Times, scrutinizing both power and navigation problems: "The St. Lawrence project should be judged not as something vitally necessary in carrying out our defense program or aiding...
...there was something about the St. Lawrence Seaway. Like most gigantic projects of State planning-like Russia's White Sea Canal, Germany's Strength Through Joy automobile factories, France's Maginot Line-it was the kind of Big Job that made a strong appeal to the imagination. The thought of warships abuilding on sheltered inland seas, of ocean-going freighters plowing to the docks of Detroit, appealed to many a hardhead aware of the labyrinthine economic dangers of the project. It was impossible to estimate the cultural consequences of so vast an undertaking, the changed relations with...
...scheme was still only a scheme, in spite of the President's determined words. There was bound to be a hot time in Congress when the Seaway came up before it, next session. Public opinion might stop the plan, as it had stopped the Supreme Court reorganization bill. Or, like