Message to the Great Lakes Seaway and Power Conference.

To my friends of the Great Lakes Seaway and Power Conference:

As I said in a message to your last conference four years ago, this assemblage of leaders from many sections of the country for a most practical purpose is a welcome and significant event.

I said then that "an opportunity is presented to complete a seaway comparable in economic value to the Panama Canal,"—a seaway to which "the public development of St. Lawrence power is inseparably linked."

It was then an opportunity. It is now a vital necessity.

The United States needs the St. Lawrence Seaway for defense. The United States needs this great landlocked sea as a secure haven in which it will always be able to build ships and more ships in order to protect our trade and our shores.

The United States needs, tremendously needs, the power project which will form a link in the Seaway in the International Rapids Section of the St. Lawrence River to produce aluminum and more aluminum for the airplane program which will assure command of the air.

Selfish interests will tell you that I am cloaking this great project in national defense in order to gain an objective which has always been dear to me. But I tell you that it has always been dear to me because I recognized its vital importance to the people in peace and in war.

Let those who oppose the immediate undertaking of this project sit here at the center of the national-defense effort in Washington and feel the pressure of the National Defense Commission calling for more and more power for our great aluminum 'plants and for other munitions industries requiring lots of cheap power. I am sure that they will know that the opposition which defeated the St. Lawrence treaty in 1934 was a mistaken opposition, based on failure to appraise the full needs of their country in the world situation which was even then developing.

What would we not give today, we who are responsible for the country's supreme defense effort, if the great St. Lawrence turbines were already in place, steadily revolving under the drive of St. Lawrence waters now running to waste, producing every hour of the day 1,000,000 horsepower to supply the expansion of our essential defense industries.

Had this project been started in 1934, as we urged, it would now be complete and occupying a place with other great projects, such as the Tennessee Valley in the Southeast, Boulder Dam in the Southwest, and the Columbia River projects in the Northwest, among the great national-defense assets of this continent.

No one who has studied our national-defense problems and the international situation can possibly fail to see the need for this project in the defense of the continent. The Congress of the United States, in providing funds for a two-ocean navy on a program covering many years, has properly recognized the essential place of sea power in continental defense. The world's merchant tonnage is diminishing at the rate of tens of thousands of tons a month. The distances which may be effectively covered by bombing planes are rapidly increasing.

Seacoast shipyards are already overtaxed with uncompleted construction. Shipyards on the Great Lakes, with access to the ocean, yet close to the sources of supply of labor, raw and finished materials, further removed from possible attack, may be a vital factor in successful defense of this continent. They will help to build the ships which will bring back commerce to the harbors of the Atlantic Coast.

Opponents of the project have pointed out that it takes four years to build this seaway. They know, but fail to mention, that it takes at least that long to build a battleship. They also know that this project will cost the United States less than three battleships and that the power project will be entirely self-liquidating.

We hope that the world situation may soon improve. But we are bound to be prepared for a long period of possible danger. Who can say, with assurance, that we shall not need for our defense or peaceful pursuits every possible ship-building resource, particularly those that exist and may be developed in the interior of our country? Only one who can say that we do not need the battleships that we are now building will dare to say that we do not need the essential Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway.

The need for the Seaway is coupled with an increasing demand for the power. Already our defense industries in the Northeast have been required to import huge blocks of electric power from Canada. They are asking greater imports and Canada can agree to supply this power only temporarily. A new source of cheap power for national defense must be developed immediately.

Along with its benefits to national defense, this project will contribute to the peace-time welfare of a multitude of laborers, small businessmen, home owners, and farmers. I said in 1936 and I say now, "such a development as we propose to carry out in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Basin unquestionably will result in greater activity for all ports and transportation agencies. This has been the history of all new navigation projects and improvements directed to better commercial communication in this country and throughout the world. The fear that the Seaway will result in injury on the lower Mississippi or to our Atlantic ports is groundless."

What this project means to the ordinary man and woman cannot be too highly stressed. It means a more secure nation. It means a continent protected and served by the additional shipping built in inland shipyards. It means more industries, both defense and domestic, thriving on the cheapest power in history. It means more comforts in the homes of many cities and rural areas. It means more work for the ordinary citizen in shipyards, factories, and other transportation services connecting the center of this continent with this great highway to and 'from our national and international markets.

I am preparing to press for the immediate construction of this project. Because of its vital defense character I have allocated one million dollars of the defense funds made available by the Congress to make the necessary engineering surveys and to prepare the preliminary plans and specifications so that no time may be lost in starting the undertaking.

I am conducting conversations with our neighbor Canada to work out the international aspects of the development of this great common asset. I shall propose to the Congress of the United States, which will assemble in January, that it take the necessary steps toward completion of this St. Lawrence Seaway and power project, on which so much of our national safety and welfare depend.