Canal and Inner Harbor should be assumed by Uncle Sam. It will leave no
stone unturned to have him assume the obligation.

The Navigation Canal is essentially a harbor improvement. It enables
practically unlimited industrial development and commercial
interchange. It is an important link in the Intracoastal Canal system
which the government is developing to provide an inland waterway from
Boston, Mass. to Brownsville, Tex., and, with the dredging of a channel
through Lake Pontchartrain to the Gulf, a problem which U.S. engineers
have been studying for some time and an undertaking which they have
found feasible, it will put the nation's second port about fifty miles
closer to the sea. It has considerable military value. Its purpose is,
therefore, national; the local interests are secondary.

It is no new principle, this obligation of the government. That duty
has been recognized by Congress since the United States was.

Any rivers and harbors bill will show great and useful expenditure for
waterways improvement.

The Panama Canal, built by the government, is the greatest example.

Coming closer home, there is south pass at the mouth of the
Mississippi. A bar, with a nine-foot depth of water, blocked the
commerce of New Orleans. Under the rivers and harbors act of 1875,
Captain James B. Eads was paid $8,000,000 for building the famous
jetties to provide a 26-foot channel. Since then, the channel has been
deepened to 33 feet.

In more recent years, the government began to improve southwest pass,
the westernmost mouth of the Mississippi. A nine-foot bar was there,
too. To increase the depth to 35 feet, the government spent, up to
1919, about $15,000,000, and is still spending.

"Just as the purpose of the improvements of these channels was to
bridge the distance from deep water to deep water" says Arthur McGuirk,
special counsel of the Dock Board, in a report of February 23, 1921, to
the Board, "so is the purpose of the Navigation Canal to bridge the
distance from the deep water of the river to the proposed deep water
channel of the lake."

In the annual report of the chief of engineers, U.S.A., for the fiscal
year ending June 30, 1919, are listed the following waterways
improvements and canal developments being made by the Government:

"Operating and care of canals, $3,596,566.20.

"Cape Cod canal, purchase authorized, river and harbors act, August 8,
1917, cost not exceeding $10,000,000, and enlargement $5,000,