Arizona republican., 1911-05-09

a cargo that would give her a draft of 90 feet and permit her to go to sea, would have been laughed at as ridiculous. Then, before the great Eads project had started. there were but F to l6 feet on the bar at the mouth of the river Of course only smaller vessels Of a few hundred tons tonnage could get up to New Orleans. Up to the time of use of South pass. with its 2S feet, it was common thing for sea going ships to be de- tained outside the mouth of the river waiting for the chance Of q freshet or high water to get through The original project for Southwest pass calls for d minimum depth of 35 feet and a channel width of 900 feet. IL will be the largest and straightest of the delta outlets. The assurance of the success of this en- gineering work makes New Orleans at once of all the cities of the At lantic seaboard second only to New York as one of the worlds greatest deep-sea ports, and clinches it's inn portance as a naval base and naval station; for the largest of dread nOught warships can pass through and up to the city with a stretch of 80 miles of roadway.
 The completion Of the Panama canal itself is not of more importance to the commerce of the Mississippi valley than the success of the Eads jetty system demonstrated in the completion of the Southwest pass inn prOVement. The Southern Commer- cial congress proposes to hold at New Orleans a celebration at the convention of the organization some time in 1913 of the passage of the first vessels through the. canal. it being anticipated that vessels can get through by that time although il is calculated that the canal will not be entirely completed before 1915, the date il is proposed to hold the San Francisco exposition The New orleans celebration, which it is pro- posed shall embrace historical pagean- try illustrative of the progress of the southern states from their earliest settlement, might quite appropriately make a conspicuous feature Of the grand achievement in the Eads pro- jects in which as conspicuous ad- vOcates were two Louisiant states men and patriots, Randall l.. Gibson and James B. Eustis. The putting of heads together of these men with the engineering genius made it possi- ble for New Orleans to become the greatest entreport of the Missis- sippi valleys commerce. It is going to make New Orleans the headquar- ters of the promoter geniuses. men trepreneur. the fellow who starts and conducts extensive industrial en- terprises, such as will be prime fac tors in the extension Of our trade with Central and South American countries. Then, too. in connection with this great work making New Orleans one of the worlds greatest seaports is the project of southwest ern intercoastal canal system, for which surveys and appropriations have been made by the government, with some substantial local aid, from the Mississippi to the Rio Grande. These great projects have received, and no doubt will continue to have, the earnest and enthusiastic atten- ton of the SIe?t waterway organiZa- ton. the National Rivers and Har- bors congress, for they are absolutely essential in working out its problem of providing the country with com plete and nationwide system of waterway improvement"