h property will
become less and less of a burden.

This will be so because the water frontage through which the Canal is
being created for the attraction of many enterprises which cannot
locate on the river front, is all within the limits of the city of New
Orleans.

With this Canal in operation, New Orleans will possess to the fullest
degree the three great systems of port operation: Public ownership and
operation of the river harbor facilities; public ownership of the land
and private operation of facilities on the Industrial Canal; and
private ownership of the land and private operation of the facilities
on the new channel to the sea.

No other port in the country has the capacity for this trinity of port
systems.

No other port possesses such a hinterland as is embraced within the
Mississippi Valley, nor so extensive and so complete a system of
easy-grade railroads and navigable waterways penetrating its
hinterland.

No other port holds so strategic a position in the path of the new
trade routes connecting the region of greatest productivity with the
new markets of greatest promise in Latin-America and the Orient.

[Illustration: LOCK GATE
There are Ten Like This]

CONSTRUCTION COSTS AND CONTRACTORS.

Everything is relative. Looking at the total, some may think that the
cost of the Industrial Canal is large. So it is--compared with the cost
of an irrigation ditch through a 20-acre farm. But comparing the cost
with the wealth it is invested to produce--has already begun to
produce--it dwindles to a mere percentage. And a comparison of
construction costs on the Industrial Canal with similar work done
elsewhere during the same time is very much in favor of the former.

Witness the following figures shown in the books of the engineering
department of the Dock Board:

Dredging, including the canal prism and the excavation of the sites of
the bridge foundations, siphon and lock, averaged .2784 cents a cubic
yard. The highest cost was in the lock section, from which 609,302
cubic yards were excavated at an average cost of .3796 cents a cubic
yard. On the siphon and Florida Walk bridge section, including two
other deep cuts, the 814,919 cubic yards excavated cost an average of
.2607 cents a cubic yard. On the Louisville & Nashville bridge section,
the 1,023,466 cubic yards excavated cost an average of .2363 cents a
cubic yard. From there to the lake, 1,673,787 cubic yards, the average
cost was .24