The Industrial Canal and Inner Harbor of New Orleans Part 1

The Industrial Ca.n.a.l and Inner Harbor of New Orleans.

by Thomas Ewing Dabney.

FOREWORD.

Oh the mind of man! Frail, untrustworthy, perishable--yet able to stand unlimited agony, cope with the greatest forces of Nature and build against a thousand years. Pa.s.sion can blind it--yet it can read in infinity the difference between right and wrong. Alcohol can unsettle it--yet it can create a poem or a harmony or a philosophy that is immortal. A flower pot falling out of a window can destroy it--yet it can move mountains.

If Man had a tool that was as frail as his mind, he would fear to use it. He would not trust himself on a plank so liable to crack. He would not venture into a boat so liable to go to pieces. He would not drive a tack with a hammer, the head of which is so liable to fly off.

But Man knows that what the mind can conceive, that can he execute. So Man sits in his room and plans the things the world thought impossible.

From the known he dares the unknown. He covers paper with figures, conjures forth a blue print, and sends an army of workmen against the forces of Nature. If his mind blundered, he would waste millions in money and perhaps destroy thousands of lives. But Man can trust his mind; fragile though it is, he knows it can bear the strain of any task put upon it.

All over the world there is the proof: in the heavens above, and in the waters under the earth. And nowhere has Man won a greater triumph over unspeakable odds than in New Orleans, in the dredging of a ca.n.a.l through buried forests 18,000 years old, the creation of an underground river, and the building of a lock that was thought impossible.

THE NEED RECOGNIZED FOR A CENTURY.

There is a map in the possession of T. P. Thompson of New Orleans, who has a notable collection of books and doc.u.ments on the early history of this city, dated March 1, 1827, and drawn by Captain W. T. Poussin, topographical engineer, showing the route of a proposed ca.n.a.l to connect the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, curiously near the site finally chosen for that great enterprise nearly a hundred years later.

New Orleans then was a mere huddle of buildings around Jackson Square; but with the purchase of the Louisiana territory from France, and the great influx of American enterprise that characterized the first quarter of the last century, development was working like yeast, and it was foreseen that New Orleans' future depended largely upon connecting the two waterways mentioned--the river, that drains the commerce of the Mississippi Valley, at our front door, and the lake, with its short-cut to the sea and the commerce of the world, at the back.

When the Carondelet ca.n.a.l, now known as the Old Basin Ca.n.a.l, was begun in 1794, the plan was to extend it to the river. It was also planned to connect the New Basin Ca.n.a.l, begun in 1833, with the Mississippi. This was, in fact, one of the big questions of the period. That the work was not put through was due more to the lack of machinery than of enterprise.

During the rest of the century, the proposal bobbed up at frequent intervals, and the small Lake Borgne ca.n.a.l was finally shoved through from the Mississippi to Lake Borgne, which is a bay of Lake Pontchartrain.

The difference between these early proposals and the plan for the Industrial Ca.n.a.l and Inner Harbor that was finally adopted, is that the purpose in the former case was simply to develop a waterway for handling freight, whereas the object of New Orleans' great facility, now nearing completion, is to create industrial development.

Under the law of Louisiana, inherited from the Spanish and French regimes, river frontage can not be sold or leased to private enterprise. This law prevents port facilities being sewed up by selfish interests and insures a fair deal for all shipping lines, new ones as well as old, with a consequent development of foreign trade; and port officials, at harbors that are under private monopoly, would give a pretty if the Louisiana system could be established there.

But there is no law, however good, that meets all conditions, and a number of private enterprises--warehouses and factories--have undoubtedly been kept out of New Orleans because they could not secure water frontage.

An artificial waterway, capable of indefinite expansion, on whose banks private enterprise could buy or lease, for a long period of time, the land for erecting its buildings and plants, without putting in jeopardy the commercial development of the port; a waterway that would co-ordinate river, rail and maritime facilities most economically, and lend itself to the development of a "free port" when the United States finally adopts that requisite to a world commerce--that was the recognized need of New Orleans when the proposal for connecting the two waterways came to the fore in the opening years of the present century.

The Progressive Union, later the a.s.sociation of Commerce, took a leading part in the propaganda; it was a.s.sisted by other public bodies, and forward-looking men, who gradually wore away the opposition with which is received every attempt to do something that grandfather didn't do.

And on July 9, 1914, the legislature of Louisiana pa.s.sed Act No. 244, authorizing the Commission Council of New Orleans to determine the site, and the Board of Port Commissioners of Louisiana, or Dock Board, as it is more commonly called, to build the Industrial Ca.n.a.l.

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 ca.n.a.l and locks and other improvements * * * to be paid out of the net receipts of said ca.n.a.l and appurtenances thereof, after the payment of operating expenses * * *

(and) to fix charges for tolls in said ca.n.a.l."

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

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 Ca.n.a.l.

The ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l that might ultimately be enlarged to a ship ca.n.a.l. Its cost was estimated at $2,400,000, which was less than the cost of digging the New Basin ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l. * * * The awakening started with the talk of the new ca.n.a.l."

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 ca.n.a.l. At about the same time the Illinois legislature voted to spend $5,000,000 to construct a deep water ca.n.a.l, 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 Ca.n.a.l and the New Orleans Industrial Ca.n.a.l 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 Ca.n.a.l. 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 a.s.sociation of Commerce, issued a statement to the press January 16, 1916, declaring that the prospect of the ca.n.a.l "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 endors.e.m.e.nt to the construction of the ca.n.a.l "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 ca.n.a.l 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 Ca.n.a.l project to help the country build the famous "bridge of boats."

But this new phase of the plan was far from the ca.n.a.l that was finally built. In fact, the accomplishment of this project has shown a remarkable development with the pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sociation 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 Ca.n.a.l-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 ca.n.a.l. 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 ca.n.a.l.

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 Ca.n.a.l, 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 ca.n.a.l 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.