Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1920-12-01
Juice" from Great
Lakes Flow Would
Mean Much to N. E.

Chicago, ILL.,, Nov. 3O-H. C. Gard
ner, president of the Great Lakes-St.
Lawrence Tidewater Association, today
characterized the conservation phase
of the st. Lawrence improvement as
fundamentally the most important Of
ALL" ~
He said that the electricity genera
ted by Harvesting the flow of the
Great Lakes to the sea would furnish
power to every city. town and farm
stead in northern New York and New
England. He quoted estimates that
within 10 or 20 years the annual coal
saving would amount to 100000 900 tons
Reviewing the proposal of a water !.
way from the great lakes to the ocean
Mr.. Gardner in his statement said:
From it's junction with the Gulf Of
st. Lawrence for about five hundred
and fifty miles to Montreal, the mighty
ST. Lawrence River seems more like
an arm of the sea than river At
it's mouth it is eighty miles wide. and
it is no wonder that the famous
French navigator, Jaques Cartier. who
discovered the St. Lawrence in 1884,
sailed back to France and reported to
Francis I. the reigning monarch, his
strong hope that at last the west
ward passage" to the Indies had been
found. Indeed, he seems to have been
quite mystifed by the situation de-
veloped when, in the fall of 1885, his
explorations reached the site of the
present city of Montreal.
above Montreal for the remaining
distance. approximately one hundred
and ninety miles to the rivers outlet
from Lake Ontario, the width of the
great stream averages close to two
miles. 1t is in this part of the river
that there occur the great rapids with
their total fall of two hundred twen-
ty feet and aggregate length of some
forty-five miles, that must be over
come by the works of man before the
St. Lawrence will become the untiring
and ceaseless slave it is destined soon
to be.
1.-THE flow of the stream averages
two hundred forty thousand cubic feet
per second, winter and summer.
at is these characteristics and con-
ditions that prompted Congress, when
1t instructed the International Joint
Commission to investigate and report
on plan to improve the river so that
ocean-going ships may freely enter the
Great Lakes. to include in their in
structions the making of plans and es-
Inmates for developing and utilizing
the hydro-electric power which for ali
the centuries has run to waste.
1.-The chief benefits of the improve
ments assuming that the International
Joint Commissions report will be ia
vorable and that the U. s. and Cana
dian governments approve will be
these: ... ,...t
THE farmers and industries of the
whole region that. is nearer to the
Great Lakes than to our salt water
ports will reap the advantage of low
er transportation costs. Herbert
Hoover estimated this at a saving OF
certainly six cents per bushel on
wheat, and it Will be correspondingly
as much on other grains. Over ninety
pet cent of all the many thousands of
tons of meat products. lard and ami
NAL oils that each year are exported
from this country, are produced III the
central west, and on every pound a
large saving coufdebe made by loading
into ships at our lake ports.
1.-The people of Northern New York
and New England will be benefited
. even more than their western breth-
ern, for they will not only have the
improved transportation by water. but
will have electric power for distribu-
ton to every city, town and farm
stead. Their trunk line railways can be
electrified, and they can Danish the
coal famine spectre
But fundamentally the conservation
phase of the st. Lawrence improve
ment is most important of all. Where
on our own continent is there re-
gion that is not vitality interested in
a development that will every year for
all future time save us from the need
to burn millions of tons of our black
diamonds" and use instead the white
coal'' that beneficent Providence has
laid at our doorstep? Some good judi
ges estimate that within decade or
two, after the power demand shall
have grown to meet the supply, this
annual coal saving will amount to a
hundred million tons