SUNDAY'
PORTLAND, OREGOH SUNDAY MORNING FEBRUARY 2, 1908
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Connection of a
Hundred Rivers
Greatest Water
way Project of
the Age
TpiGHTEEN thousand miles of op
tl portunityl Half a billion dollars
the price of grasping it!
Congress) at its present session, is face
to face with the greatest scheme for the
aggrandizement of the commerce of the
nation that was ever presented. No more
wonderful engineering feat could be con
ceived than the plan to establish, for all
time, a waterway route extending along the
A tlantic and Gulf coasts, coupling up rivers
with l8,000 or more miles of opportunity
for commerce and the extension of the com
mercial wealth of the nation.
With the intercoastal canal lines par
alleling the ' shores of the Atlantic and
the Gulf, the swelling tides of commerce
will flow north, south, east and west in
ever growing volume. Without it, there
can be only bleak stagnation, chafing im
potence, probably disaster.
There' is danger, grave danger. Yet
the dashing courage which was equal to the
impossibilities of Panama bids fair to suf
fice for the herculean toil of the intercoastal
canal. And the prize, once won, is of a
richness exceeding computation.
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lONGIJESS has now before it the bill o'f
Senator Newlands, of Nevada, creating
a first fund of $50,000,000 for the in
land waterway, and contemplating the
expenditure of 500,000,000 within the next ten
years.
Jt may not pass at this session. But that
It must pass, or that some measure of commen
surate magnitude must speedily be adopted,
every man in American public life, from minor
politician to far-seeing statesman, has already
conceded.
Thefe is no choice, no alternative, unless it
be the choice of purblind folly.
The man who introduced the bill, far from
being the dreamer, the visionary held up to the
gaze of shortsighted economy by the hucenesa
of the sums he demands, ia one of the experts
was not merely
indorsed by some
scattered individ
ual opinions, held
by men convinced
through their
study of the sub
ject; it' was the
settled sentiment
of the people of
the United States.
What he said was true; yet the popular sentiment, existent and pro
nnimppfl da it ia. still has' for its foundation rather an acquiescence in
the general principles of enterprise, and an indorsement of the opinion
of its chosen leaders, than a through comprehension of the vastness of
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selected by the President as specially oua ifird 118 c.nosen J,ea?er?' lDaa .n.
for membership in the inland waterways com- tfl0 iect ana ne. en!e5"ff"
mission the .Nevada authority whose broad
knowledge of the subject ranks him with Fred
erick II. Newell, the director of the reclama
tion service ; Dr. W: J. McQee, the distinguished
expert of the Geological Bureau; Gifford Pin
chot, the government forester; Senator Warner,
of Missouri, who has been one of the most
thoroughly versed students of the plan, and
Representative Burton, long acknowledged as
the congressman qualified to speak the last
word of wisdom upon the needs cf the country's
rivers and harbors.
"In the next tenycara," declarer Senator
Newlands,"the United States should spend at
least $500,000,000 in Yho improvement of inland
waters. The government should enter into this
work in every section of the country, on the
Pacific coast, the Atlantic coast, the Gulf
coast, and along the Mississippi river and its
'tributaries."
i It was Senator Newlsnda who announced
that the expediency! of the huge expenditure
;-'....-. f
The nronosal i9 to cut a channel at the northern end of the inter
coastal canal, from Barnstable bay, north of Cape Cod, to Buzzard's bay,
giving access to the comparatively smooth waters of Buzzard's bay and
an inner passage down Long Island sound to the Delaware and Raritan
Canal, at Perth Amboy.
The Delaware and Earitan, deepened, is to give access to the Dela
ware river at Trenton, New Jersey, whence there will be the route of
natural water courses to tho Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, which
extends across the narrow neck of Delaware and the Eastern Shore of
Maryland. This will provide a ship route from the Delaware river to
the Chesapeake bay.
Down the Chesapeake bay the route proceeds to Norfolk and down
the south branch of the Elizabeth river. It is likely, to cut across Curri
tuck sound, through Coanjock bay, across North Carolina, into Albemarle
sound and on through Croatan sound into Pamlico sound.
Cutting through to Beaufort, it has access, by means of various cut
tings, to an inland route paralleling the whole southern Atlantic coast
line down to Florida, and then on, skirting the gulf of Mexico and ad
mitting the enormous traffic of tho Mississippi, to Texas and the mouth
' of the Rio. Grande.
It is like some necromancer's dream in its immensity--like some
cecromancer's dream in its seeming intangibleness. But the marvel of
it is that, the more the entire project is analyzed, the more its: feasibility
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becomes apparent.
Dredgings that seemed madness
to contemplate prove trivial to mod
ern mechanical appliances.
The most conspicuous example
among all the subsidiary canal work
that would be called for is that of
the Gulf coast construction. The
Texas coast, peculiar in its forma
tion, is bounded by numerous long,
narrow islands, while a chain of
navigable bayous is available in
Louisiana. It has been estimated
that the almost ludicrous sum of
$4,000,000 would be enough to fur
nish here a charmed sixty feet wide
and nine feet in depth.
The contention, however, will
not be for any such slight depth
throughout the canal. A minimum
of twelve feet was urged by all en
gineers upon tho last Congress, when
it recognized the North Carolina
Virginia inland waterway, which
circumvents the historio dangers of
tho "Deadly Diamond" Shoal and
the terrible "Saw Teeth" of Cape
Hatteras the notorious "graveyard
of the Atlantic."
Appropriations which,, were then
made provided for only a ten-foot
waterway. But, m spite of the fact
that the advocates of the canal route were seriously chagrined at the
shallowness of the channel, the project has been advanced to the com'
pletion of all surveys and to the granting of a con,
tion of $55U,uuu lor the work requisite on the third
Pamlico sound to the ocean.
Here alone the triflingjtppropriation of half a million dollars snfflcrt
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for the purchase of right of way over 600 acrea
of ground necessary for the work, for cuta
amounting to fourteen miles in length and
4,120,000 cubic yards in content, and for afford
ing a total length of route of fifty miles.
It is a fair instance of the remarkable ease
with which many obstacles, formerly deemed!
insurmountable, prove chimeras when approach
ed with the practical eyo-of 'modern--science. f
Another difficulty, far more- serious than
the physical ones that loomed so long ia
the imagination of the country's legislators,
was the danger of the clash of sectional inter
ests. The history of the country, and especial
ly those portions of its conquests over Nature
which have found their record in the appropria
tions for rivers and -harbors during recent dec
ades, is filled with memoranda of enterprises
which were of the utmost national importance,;
yet were rendered abortive by claims of rival
projects wielding a more insistent political
power. i
But the adoption of the motto, 'a policy,
not a project," proved from the beginning a suf
ficient safeguard to all the diverse and intensely
jealous interests that were concerned. The in
disputable, necessities of the West, with the un
doubted advantages of tho mighty Mississippi,
found their place beside tho great vested inter
ests of the Enst, with their millions of trade
directly with Europe.
Tho claims of the incessantly active "North
were prevented from outweighing the urgent
necessities of the eagerly recrudescent South.
As in the cose of the North Carolina-Virginia
inland waterway, all injerests concerned real
ized the necessity of sinking individual rivalries
in the endeavor to secure a practical recogni-,
tion of the enterprise as a whole.
A NATIONAL POLICY
Its magnitude and the length of time whicS
must be required to carry it to completion, to-'
gether with the-unending labor and expense of
maintenance, improvement and extension which
must be the logical consequences, all combined
to elevate the plan to the importance, of a na
tional policy, a policy which, once inaugurated, '
must of its own momentum compel unflagging
pursuit.
The intercoastal canal is as direct a cor
ollary of the Panama Canal as is tho compul
sion of safeguards by the possession of wealth.
The world waited doubtfully whilo the United
States was assuring itself of the possession of
Panama, and let loose its chorus of congratu- !
lations only when it had the American assur
ance that the Panama route would bo the abso
lutely fair and American "open door." .
Then Europe and Asia were pleased, for :
Europe and Asia, with merchant marines in ex
istence and in prospect that left the United
States high and dry between the Rockies and v
the Alleghenies, could make all preparations
for the fierce competition which must infallibly ,
be inaugurated on the instant when the waters
of the two world oceans should meet. 1 ' - ' ;
Even today the majority of Americans
have not the least inkling of tho giant strug
gle for trade that awaits the opening of the
Panama Canal that .cyclopean labor on which
they are pouring forth their lavish wealth; that
prize of commerce which, already theirs, will
tax their utmost resources in the endeavor to)
retain it. . " ,.w . '
Germany and England, intrenched in South'
America, are already so fortified in their posi
tions by, efficient merchant -marines, , banking -systems
- and - perfected selling organization
that the, allied commerce and manufactures of
the United States t must xert their utmost .
powers if they are to dislodge them. f
Japan is establishing a steamship lino from
Yokohama to Venezuela ana Argentina, win.-:
gressional apprppria-. shall use the ranama vanai uxo buuw n
division, which opens : opened to tramc. xnoyoom jpssv v uu n -i--
sv-;e;3v-try. depending on Panama for its avenue t tit
(CONTINUED ON INSIDS TAOS.)
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