Dam Ditched; Ditch Damned

Two young friends, both fond of fishing & sailing, stood on New Brunswick's Campobello Island and looked across the water. They saw the 20-ft. tide of the Bay of Fundy seethe and storm between the rocky islands on the border between Maine and Canada, flooding the basins of Cobscook and Passamaquoddy Bays. One of the men was a promising young engineer named Dexter Parshall Cooper. His youthful companion, a rising young politician, was Franklin D. Roosevelt. Engineer Cooper explained a great dream of his: to throw a string of dams between the islands, harness that galloping tide to make electric power. Franklin Roosevelt's eyes gleamed with excitement as he listened to the details of his friend's vision.

Off & on for some 20 years thereafter Engineer Cooper tried in vain to obtain backing for his tide-harnessing project, to win the consent of Canada and the state of Maine. Then one day in 1933 he explained his plan all over again to Franklin Roosevelt. The President, still enthusiastic, was now able to be of real help. Unfortunately surveys by PWA and the Federal Power Commission rejected the Cooper project as uneconomical. In the summer of 1934, with a new Congress coming up for election and the old saw. "As-Goes-Maine-so-Goes-the-Nation," in many a mind. President Roosevelt wrote Democratic Governor Brann of Maine that the Federal Government would certainly look seriously into the Quoddy project.

Maine went Democratic. So did the nation. Secretary Ickes put Engineer Cooper on a special survey committee. Its report was favorable. Before long Army Engineers found themselves standing on the brink of Cobscook Bay with $10,000,000 of relief cash in prospect and White House orders to start Quoddy Dam. To save international complications the project had been cut in half and confined entirely to U. S. waters. Even so. its estimated cost was $36,000,000. Five dams had to be built between the islands enclosing Cobscook Bay. In places the water was 150 ft. deep. A 6-knot current slashed through the channels. It was forseen that for ten hours a day. between tides, turbines could not turn, but while they were operating it was planned to use their power to pump seawater to an upland reservoir, whence it could return creating auxiliary power during Quoddy's idle hours.

By last January the placid sardine-canning village of Eastport on Cobscook Bay was a booming town. Some 5,000 Maine unemployed were working day & night on the project. Three labor camps had been established. On Moose Island, Quoddy Village with 130 colonial houses had been built, with dormitories for both sexes of dam-builders, with grandfather clocks, loveseats, early colonial furniture and $16,000-houses for executives.

Yet Maine as a whole was apathetic to President Roosevelt's expenditure of relief millions within its borders. The Maine legislature had failed to set up a Quoddy Power Authority, which was part of the agreement with the Federal Government. The ground for the upland reservoir proved to be so sandy that it would not hold water, and plans had to be made for a steam plant to operate during Quoddy's ten idle hours. Critics contended that for $16,000,000 a steam-generating plant could be built which would produce just as much electricity as the whole of Quoddy, thereby saving $20,000,000. They said that the nearest market for Quoddy's power was in Boston, 300 miles away, and the steam plant might better be built in Massachusetts than in Maine. Engineer Cooper talked of a market closer at hand, gave no details.

In the same head-over-heels haste President Roosevelt had started another relief project at the other end of the Atlantic seaboard. Day after the S. S. Dixie went on a reef in a tropical hurricane last September, he announced that he was starting work on a ship canal across Florida. This debatable enterprise would cost $146,000,000 plus, might make a semidesert of that part of Florida lying south of the waterway (TIME, Feb. 17). As a means of putting men to work, the President turned $5,000,000 over to the Army Engineers, told them to get going.

Before it will appropriate money for such public works as Quoddy and the Florida Canal, Congress must first authorize their construction. President Roosevelt had neglected to ask Congress for such authorization. Therefore last winter the House declined to appropriate funds for Quoddy and the Florida Canal when the War Department Appropriation bill was passed. In the Senate Florida's Senator Fletcher fought in vain for his Florida Canal (TIME, March 30). Quoddy, however, was not even fought for Maine's Republican Senator Frederick Hale quietly told the Senate that so far as he was concerned he did not favor any appropriation for Quoddy in the War Department bill; if President Roosevelt wished to continue Quoddy as a relief project, that was quite all right. Quoddy was not mentioned again in Congress.

Thus last week Franklin Roosevelt found back in his lap Florida's ditch which Congress damned, Maine's dam. which Congress ditched. At his press conference newshawks politely asked what he intended to do about them. He replied that he did not intend to carry them on as relief projects on relief money any longer. Washing his hands of Quoddy, on which he had spent $5,500,000, and the Florida Ship Canal, in which he had sunk $5,400,000, the President declared it was now up to Congress to take care of the two White House orphans.

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