Word: seaway
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...over a decade, American railroad and seaport lobbies have effectively bottled Congressional action on the Saint Lawrence Seaway plan. Their motives are sample enough: they will lose trade if the Great Lakes are opened up to ocean ships. But now, they are desperate. The Canadian Government unceremoniously uncorked the bottle by announcing its intention to start begging up the Saint Lawrence in the spring, whether the U.S. joins...
...final gasp of opposition, the railway and seaport lobbies are hinting that Canada really cannot afford to build the Seaway by itself at all, and that its announcement is intended to dupe Congress into co-sponsoring the project...
Talking directly to the seaway's opponents, "certain railroads and port interests," Truman warned that Canada would charge-tolls of U.S. ships, perhaps even after the cost of the seaway had been paid off. He argued that an inland (i.e., submarine-proof) route to bring iron ore from Labrador to U.S. steel mills was "of great importance to our national security." Said he: "No great nation has ever deliberately abandoned its interest in any of the vital waterways of the world...
Truman's message provoked an immediate outburst in the Senate by Texas' Tom Connally. "This project would be built on foreign territory," he snorted. "I am very much opposed to it and my people are opposed to it." Vermont's George Aiken, a seaway supporter, declared that Connally should resign as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee if he planned to block a vote. Connally kept right on snorting: "For five months of the year [the seaway] would be frozen up as hard as the mind of the Senator from Vermont...
...biggest, but perhaps the most significant of all Canadian enterprises now afoot is the St. Lawrence Seaway, a canal system linking the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes to enable all but the biggest deep-sea vessels to sail upstream into North America's industrial heartland. This project has been pressed and attacked on both sides of the border for more than 50 years. Canada has been anxious to build it; all U.S. Presidents from Coolidge to Truman have advocated it (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). But the U.S. Congress, hobbled by minority interests (railroads and East Coast shippers...