St. Lawrence Seaway: Pigeonholed Again

When the U.S. Senate voted to send the St. Lawrence Seaway proposal back to the Foreign Relations Committee on February 27, smothering it for this session, a long and respectable tradition was once more upheld. The St. Lawrence question has arrived on Congressional floors in various guises in the past--as a treaty with Canada, as a joint resolution of both Houses, and as an amendment to another bill--and invariably it has fallen before an unfavorable vote.

Franklin Roosevelt tried to have it passed in treaty form in March, 1934. No less than 22 Democrats stormed across party lines to hand FDR his first major defeat. As an amendment to the Rivers and Harbors Bill in 1944, the Seaway was an easier victim, and last month's de facto rejection showed the opposition in comfortable command with a 27 vote majority.

The project itself has two sides. It calls for the creation of a 27-foot channel that will allow ocean-going vessels to steam from the Atlantic to any of the ports on the Great Lakes. The Seaway's second feature is a power-producing chain of dams on the St. Lawrence which would provide locks for navigation. As now conceived, the entire enterprise is estimated at $720,000,000, although opponents claim that expenses would run much higher.

Mid-West Supporters

Supporters of the Seaway, mostly mid-westerners, point rapturously to the benefits of connecting the Great Lakes to the Atlantic, which they believe would make Chicago the commercial capital of the world. They argue that the Seaway could relieve much of the pressure now taxing the country's overloaded transportation system. Minnesotans claim that the great Mesabi iron ore deposits that feed the mid-west steel mills are nearly played out, and if cheap Labrador ores can't be shipped down the St. Lawrence, an unthinkable dislocation of the steel industry will occur. Senator Wiley of Wisconsin warned in recent debates that, by refusing to build the Seaway, "we shall in effect be tying a nose around our own necks." Wiley accused New England of a conspiracy to block the project and force steel companies to move East where cheap ores can easily be shipped in.

New England Opposition

The two Massachusetts Senators, Lodge and Saltonstall, have been among the Seaway's most vociferous opponents. Lodge held that the 27-foot channel wouldn't be deep enough to allow passage for more than a small percentage of U.S. ships. He pointed out that the river was frozen over in the winter anyhow. Casting suspicion on the cost estimates in general, Lodge compared the planning to "a man running across the country like a house afire with his shirt tail out." Saltonstall felt that provisions to give New York control of power facilities were bad for the surrounding states. "New York will take the best of it for itself and turn over what is left to New England," he complained.

Officials of Atlantic and Gulf ports have been calling the Seaway all sorts of names ever since it first came up. They paint tragic pictures of ocean commerce steaming to Chicago and Duluth, leaving New York, Boston, and New Orleans little more than ghost towns. On the other hand, big shipping firms stated flatly that they wouldn't use the Seaway; Senator Morse retorted that they would when they found it profitable. Senator Aiken of Vermont roundly scored the shippers, saying that "since 1936 they have had their hands in the Federal Treasury, clear up to the armpits."

Accuse Big Interests

Seaway proponents have hotly accused the big interests--railroads, shipping, and power--of exerting pressure behind the scenes to kill the program each time it came up. After the 1934 battle had been lost, Senator La Follette declared that the opposition was in the hands of J.P. Morgan. On continual guard against governmental power projects, private power companies realize the vast potentialities of the St. Lawrence. In 1921, Alcoa, General Electric, and Du Pont wanted to buy the rights for power development on the river from Ogdensburg, New York, to Montreal. They were willing to throw the navigation in for free, but were turned down. Although spokesmen for private power claim that the supply is adequate, New York and New England are paying rates that are unusually high for such a highly industrialized section of the country. The Seaway means cheap, plentiful--and public--power.

Both factions have been loud and determined, and have rarely been concerned by conflicting arguments within their ranks. The Seaway has proved itself a regional issue, defying party precepts and platforms. In the recent fight, for instance, New York's governor and junior senator, both Republicans, were in direct opposition, and in 1946, Chicago's Ed Kelly and Henry Wallace joined in praise of it. Now, of course, the cry of the Mid-West is "wait 'til next year," when the venerable Seaway will make another appearance in the halls of Congress and probably be booted out again.