Word: seaway
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...Congress had given President Roosevelt his way in most matters, but it balked at the Seaway. The Senate refused to ratify the treaty with Canada that had been signed in the last days of the Hoover Administration, although the President had twice sent messages urging its ratification. Last week he let it be known that he would bring up the Seaway again, in time for his prospective honeymoon with Congress during the third Administration. He had Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle publish the banns. In Detroit Mr. Berle read a Presidential message to a conference of Seaway supporters...
...objection to his scheme the President had anticipated. Hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1933 developed a mighty assemblage of opponents to the Seaway-shippers, economists, railroad men, representatives of the Port of New Orleans-speaking for interests that would be injured, or thought they would be injured, if the Seaway went through. And New York State's utilities had fought the Seaway from the start. Said the President: "Selfish interests will tell you that I am cloaking this great project in national defense in order to gain an objective which has always been dear...
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...