Commissioners of Louisiana, or Dock Board, as it is more commonly called, to build the Industrial Canal.

The act gave the board a right to expropriate all property necessary for the purpose, to build the "necessary locks, slips, laterals, basins and appurtenances * * * in aid of commerce," and to issue an unlimited amount in bonds "against the real estate and canal and locks and other improvements * * * to be paid out of the net receipts of said canal and appurtenances thereof, after the payment of operating expenses * * * (and) to fix charges for tolls in said canal."

This was submitted to a vote of the people at the regular election in November of that year, and became part of the constitution.

To avoid the complication of a second mortgage on the property, the Dock Board subsequently (ordinance of June 29, 1918) set a limit on the total bond issue. To enable the development that was then seen to be dimly possible, it set this limit high—at $25,000,000.

NEW ORLEANS DECIDES TO BUILD CANAL.

The canal for which the legislature made provision in 1914 bears about the relation to the one that was finally built as the acorn does to the oak. It was to be a mere barge canal that might ultimately be enlarged to a ship canal. Its cost was estimated at $2,400,000, which was less than the cost of digging the New Basin canal nearly a century before, which was a great deal smaller and ran but half way between the lake and river.

The panic of the early days of the World War shoved even this modest plan to one side, and it was not until the next year that enthusiasm caught its second wind. Then the leading men and the press of the city put themselves behind the project once more.

As the New Orleans Item said, October 22, 1915, "the lack of that canal has already proven to have cost the city much in trade and developed industry."

Commenting on the "astonishing exhibition of intelligent public spirit" in New Orleans, the Chicago Tribune said that "no other city in or near the Mississippi Valley, including Chicago, has shown such an awakening to the possibilities and rearrangements that are following the cutting of the Panama canal. * * * The awakening started with the talk of the new canal."

Other papers throughout the country made similar expressions.

In 1915 the engineering firm of Ford, Bacon & Davis made a preliminary survey of conditions and how development would be affected by the canal. At about the same time the Illinois legislature voted to spend $5,000,000 to construct a deep water canal, giving Chicago water connection with the Mississippi River; and the New Orleans Item linked the two projects when it said, January 16, 1916, "the Illinois-Lake Michigan Canal and the New Orleans Industrial Canal are complementary links in a new system of waterways connecting the upper Valley through the Mississippi River and New Orleans with the Gulf and the Panama Canal. This system again gives the differential to the Valley cities in trade with the markets of the Orient, our own west coast, and South America."

Commodore Ernest Lee Jahncke, president of the Association of Commerce, issued a statement to the press January 16, 1916, declaring that the prospect of the canal "brightened the whole business future of this city and the Mississippi Valley"; the New Orleans Real Estate Board and the Auction Exchange, in a joint meeting, urged its speedy building; and Governor Luther E. Hall, in a formal statement to the press January 16, 1916, gave his endorsement to the construction of the canal "long sought by many commercial interests of New Orleans," and said that work would probably begin in "three months."

In August, 1916, the governor dismissed the Dock Board and appointed a new one.

In the confusion attending the reorganization the canal project was again dropped. The New Orleans American, on August 28, 1916, attempted to revive it, but the effort fell flat, and the plan laid on ice until 1918.

America had in the meantime thrown its hat into the ring, and the cry was going up for ships, more ships, and still more ships. National patriotism succeeded where civic effort had failed. New Orleans brought out its Industrial Canal project to help the country build the famous "bridge of boats."

But this new phase of the plan was far from the canal that was finally built. In fact, the accomplishment of this project has shown a remarkable development with the passing years, reminding one of the growth of the trivial hopes of the boy into the mighty achievement of the man.

Ships could not be built on the Mississippi River. The twenty-foot range in the water level would require the ways to make a long slope into the current, a work of prohibitive expense, and as nearly impossible from an engineering standpoint as anything can be.

Early in 1918 a committee of representative Orleanians began to study the situation. This was known as the City Shipbuilding Committee. It comprised Mayor Behrman, O. S. Morris, president of the Association of Commerce; Walter Parker, manager of that body; Arthur McGuirk, special counsel of the Dock Board; R. S. Hecht, president of the Hibernia Bank; Dr. Paul H. Saunders, president of the Canal-Commercial Bank; J. D. O'Keefe, vice-president of the Whitney-Central Bank; J. K. Newman, financier; G. G. Earl, superintendent of the Sewerage and Water Board; Hampton Reynolds, contractor; D. D. Moore, James M. Thompson and J. Walker Ross, of the Times-Picayune, Item and States, respectively.

On February 10, 1918, this committee laid the plans for an industrial basin, connected with the river by a lock, and ultimately to be connected with the lake by a small barge canal. Ships could be built on the banks of this basin, the water in which would have a fixed level.

Mr. Hecht, and Arthur McGuirk, special counsel of the Dock Board, devised the plan by which the project could be financed. The Dock Board would issue long-term bonds, and build the necessary levees with the material excavated from the canal.

The committee's formal statement summarized the public need of this facility as follows:

"1. It will provide practical, convenient and fixed-level water-front sites for ship and boat building and repair plants, for industries and commercial enterprises requiring water frontage.

"2. It will provide opportunities for all enterprises requiring particular facilities on water frontage to create such facilities.

"3. It will permit the complete co-ordination, in the City of New Orleans, of the traffic of the Mississippi River and its tributaries, of the Intracoastal Canal, the railroads and the sea, under the most convenient and satisfactory conditions.

"4. In connection with the publicly-owned facilities on the river front, it will give New Orleans all the port and harbor advantages enjoyed by Amsterdam with its canal system, Rotterdam and Antwerp with their joint river and ocean facilities; Hamburg with its free port, and Liverpool with its capacity as a market deposit.

"5. It will give New Orleans a fixed-level, well protected harbor.

"6. It will serve the purposes of the Intracoastal Canal and increase the benefits to accrue to New Orleans from that canal.

"7. In connection with revived commercial use of the inland waterways upon which the federal government is now determined, it will open the way for an easy solution of the problem of handling, housing and interchange of water-borne commerce, and of the development of facilities for the storage of commodities between the period of production and consumption.

"8. It will prove an important facility in the equipment of New Orleans to meet the new competition the enlarged Erie Canal will create. The original Erie Canal harmed New Orleans because Mississippi River boat lines could not build their own terminal and housing facilities at New Orleans."