The Washington herald., 1921-11-20
Comedy Of Errors.

Great Lakes-St Lawrence waterway project
In this continuance, it shows an almost amusing
narrowness and blind ignorance of the project, as
well as of inland shipping conditions. In this it
follows Gov. Miller, whose fondness for expressing
half-bake opinions is rendering him almost famous
The Times in the keenness of its ingrown vision
calls the project which rests largely on
skillfully conducted propaganda and the easily
tickled imagination of the Middle West"
Quite so; that imagination has been so tickled
as to have formally united eighteen States through
official action, and induced them by legislative ap
preparations to finance the propaganda Imagina-
ton can hardly go further, and yet it more than
matched by Gov Miller when he acted as host to
Congressional party invited to inspect the Erie
canal-they made the trip of inspection of that
great waterway in automobiles
The governor says the canal i, sufficient to
provide transportation for all the products of the
West destined for the Doubtless this, too
would be by motor vehicles, automobiles for pas
sengers and trucks for freight Yet the canal has
been used by just such politicians tickle sI65-
100000 from the taxpayers of New York and it
cannot compete with rail transportation. A
line of trucks on a good broad highway costing
one-fourth much would beat it to FRAGILE in
time and in rate schedules.
But the Times is not shy imagination itself
and il is easily tickled by its own preudices even
TO the extent of spreading paper how much it
does not know. The United States and Canadian
engineer commission has estimated the cost of the
St. Lawrence improvement to 25-foot channel,
with the development of I,4o4yooo horsepower at
dam by-product, at S25z,7oo,ooo This cost
would be borne equally by this country and Can
ada. But the Times blows its bubbles and raises
this from sIz6,35oooo, the United States share,
to s2ooooo,oo That i, really a quite remarkable
engineering feat to accomplish with typewriter
without so much as looking at a map, let alone a
blue print, a sounding.
1t also finds that ocean steamers would not go
to Buffalo Chicago, Cleveland or Detroit let alone
Duluth-Superior, because the lake canals closed
by ice for from four to FIVE months of the year.
But they do go to Petrograd to Vladyostok, even
Archangel and hundreds of like ports. Just why
so cruelty close out the lake ports of our own
country? The locks and limited channels would
shut out the deep ships anyway" it then apollo
gizes, and they could compete with the lake
ships Besides, it concludes, "the ocean goers have
to run all the year round to make profit"
Is it possible to be right in anything when
wrong in so many things? Ocean ships do not
have to sail all the year round in the same waters
to make profit, and it might be found where many
Of them regularly lay up for a season each year.
sells did not navigate through locks and channels
anywhere else in the world, then those to be built
on the ST. Lawrence might be unique expert
ment. As it is they will be usual to be but
the commonplace, and strangely enough of the
things the Times does not know, is the fact that
there are carriers fully fiat bot
toned" as the lake vessels which are distinctive
from ocean vessels because of general design, but
because of lightness of construction.
But worst of all New York might be taxed to
help pay for this shpway to the ocean. That
would be money going out and there is more
painful operation for city unaccustomed to
1T New York is familiar only with money rolling
in from the Middle West. Its income is largely
paid by the Middle West. Its financial life blood
flows from that direction. There is its greatest
market. There are the mines and mills from which
New Workers get much of their incomes. There
are forests and railroads. smeters and factories
which pay tribute to them. New York may pay 40
per cent of the Federal tax, but not with its own
money nor its earnings. Gov. Miller's quoted
irony as to taxation is quite fat, stale and as
undigested as his quoted statements of alleged
facts Moreover, some day New York might like
the help in Congress of those eighteen Middle
West States with thirty-sx Senators.