Seaway Attacked

Amid much political jubilation on both sides of the border the U. S. and Canada last July signed a treaty to construct a $543,000,000 seaway along the St. Lawrence River connecting the Great Lakes and the Atlantic (TIME, July 25). Last week Senator Borah and his Foreign Relations colleagues sat down to hear what was wrong with this pact. In five days, opponents of its ratification piled up such a mountain of objections that even its friends admitted it had little chance to get through the coming short session.

Critics of the seaway treaty came from Boston. Buffalo, New York City, Portland (Me.), Philadelphia, Albany and Baltimore territory which foresaw damage to existing trade routes should oceanic traffic be diverted to the North. Loudest objectors were U. S. railroads, seconded by their organized security holders including banks and insurance companies. Great Lakes ship owners likewise heckled at the threat of invasion of their fresh-water domain by foreign craft.

Massed behind the treaty are 22 Midwest and Northwest States whose citizens envisage a cheaper tradeway to world markets, particularly for wheat.

Gist of objections raised before the Foreign Relations Committee:

The Cost of such a seaway is altogether speculative, with its ultimate value to the U. S. highly conjectural. The International Joint Commission fixed $543,000,000 as the cost, but President Hoover has estimated it at $800,000,000, Engineer Hugh Lincoln Cooper as high as $1,350,000,000.

Winter Weather would limit the sea-way's operation to barely half a year.

Railroads would lose the cream of their traffic in the summer but would have to keep their equipment ready for the winter movement of freight. U. S. carriers to which Reconstruction Finance Corp. has already advanced $350,000,000 are precariously close to bankruptcy and such a subsidy to a competitor would complete their ruin. If the roads were paid what the seaway would cost U. S. taxpayers they could haul free all the grain it would carry and much more besides.

Rates on wheat will not, as promised, be reduced by 6-c- to 9-c- per bu., because this commodity is now being carried from the head of the Lakes to Montreal for about 5-c- per bu.

Power from the river will prove unprofitable. To compete with steam a hydroelectric plant must cost less than $150 per h.p. St. Lawrence power, by the International Joint Commission's own figures, would cost $271 per h.p.

Freighters especially built for the Great Lakes are unable to pass out to salt water. Foreign "tramps" will enter the seaway to provide cut-throat competition.

Lake Michigan will become "internationalized."

Insurance on the new route will be prohibitive.

U. S. Traffic on the Great Lakes averages 134,000,000 tons per year of which only 14,000,000 is for export. Canada would ship out 300,000,000 bu. of wheat whereas the U. S. would have less than one-sixth of that for foreign markets.

War between Britain and any friend or ally of the U. S. would close the seaway to U. S. trade through the Canadian section.

This objection stirred Peter Gansevoort Ten Eyck, outspoken chairman of the Albany Port District Commission, to advance a startling new idea at the Senate hearing: "Before the U. S. should invest in the canalization of the St. Lawrence, it should place itself in a position to be a 50% beneficiary by purchasing all land east and south of the centre line of the river from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic. This could readily be done, without great additional cost to taxpayers, by crediting England with the purchase price on her War Debt."* At one sweep Mr. Ten Eyck would add approximately 177,398 sq. mi. to U. S. territory, including New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and the southern part of Quebec.

All Canada scoffed the Ten Eyck idea. Declared Oscar Earnest Fleming of the Canadian Deep Waterways & Power Association: "The people of Quebec and the Maritimes are intensely British and would object to being transferred like a lot of cattle." Quebec's Premier Taschereau, long a seaway critic, picked up the Ten Eyck proposal and patriotically brandished it as one good reason why Canada should reject the St. Lawrence treaty. At St. John's, Que., the Chamber of Commerce unanimously demanded that the U. S. give Canada all of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine north of the 45DEG parallel in exchange for U. S. rights to use the Canadian section of the St. Lawrence.

*Frequent have been the unofficial suggestions that Britain and France pay their War Debts by ceding their West Indian possessions to the U. S.

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