Hope for the Seaway

When 14 members of the House Public Works Committee took off in a U.S. Air Force C-54 last fortnight for a 3,000-mile tour of the proposed St. Lawrence seaway, seasoned Washington hands wrote it off as just another junket. It was well known that a committee majority opposed the $935 million project and probably would let it die. Last week when the committeemen got back to Washington, it looked as though the experts had forgotten the old saw that seeing is believing.

Decadent Peoples? The trip began dramatically at the yawning, man-made canyons of the Mesabi iron-ore range, where miners were washing down bedrock with hoses to extract the shrinking deposits of ore. The Congressmen heard estimates that the Mesabi's reserves would last as little as five years longer. They found Mesabi mining men unanimously convinced that the seaway is necessary to bring Labrador ore to U.S. steel mills. Said Major General Lewis Pick, U.S. Army chief of engineers,* who accompanied the Congressmen: "Any man who opposes this undertaking should prepare to make peace with his Maker, for if [the U.S. and Canada] are denied steel . . . we must become decadent peoples."

The Congressmen watched the heavy ore boat traffic through Sault Ste. Marie. Then they cruised on the Canadian icebreaker Ernest Lapointe through part of the 120-mile bottleneck preventing similar navigation past the St. Lawrence rapids below Ogdensburg, N.Y. Even with fuel and ballast reduced to cut her draft, the Ernest Lapointe could barely squeeze through the antiquated existing locks. The Congressmen also noted that even now the river is busy with small boat commerce--evidence of potential Canadian profits if Ottawa carries out its threat to build the seaway alone. At Barnhart Island (once a rum-runners' hideaway), they watched the International Rapids plunge in wasted, foamy fury toward the sea, saw where generators could be built to pump 3,400,000 h.p. of electric energy into U.S. and Canadian industry.

Dogged Enemies. The trip, which cost U.S. taxpayers $6,000, failed to convert any of the seaway's enemies. Said Representative Tom Pickett of Texas: "I'll be the first to vote no. Texas has no interest in it and neither do I." But several were softened and seaway supporters were confident that a committee majority would now recognize that the project's importance rated a vote by the full House. Equally important, the committee chairman, Democrat Charles A. Buckley, was converted from a lukewarm supporter to an ardent seaway enthusiast--despite the violent anti-seaway sentiments of his native New York City. Said he: "My country comes first . . . [The seaway] is essential to American defense."

This strongly indicated that the committee would report out the bill, probably in about three weeks. It will still have to pass the House Rules Committee, the House itself, then a Senate committee (soon to begin hearings) and finally the Senate itself. Its enemies were far from licked. But the week's news meant that the single biggest hurdle apparently has been surmounted. Said a seaway supporter: "For the first time we've really got a chance."

* And builder of the wartime Ledo Road, also known as "Pick's Pike," which led from India to the Burma Road.

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