Chicago's Ditch

Chicagoans who like nothing better than a good noisy demonstration at "the depot" had a splendid one last week. In came a train bearing a burly moose of a man with hands, feet and a smile which any politician might envy. And that was what he was, a politician, onetime Mayor William Hale Thompson of Chicago, now chairman of the Illinois waterways commission. He had come from Washington and when the brass bands had followed him to a hotel he shouted, "Let them come in!"

Curious idlers who wondered why they had tagged along, heard him declaim: "This is one of the greatest days in American history. . . . The New Orleans steamboats will be whistling in Chicago before very long. . . . It's a fine Christmas present for old Chicago!"

Out went the idlers to listen for New Orleans steamboats, thinking what a generous man this burly shouter must be, to be giving old Chicago Christmas presents. Wiser citizens realized that he had seen the proper people in Washington.

For 25 years Chicago has longed for a ditch between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi so that she may become a "seaport." Other cities on the Great Lakes have blocked Chicago--sued her, brought injunctions, vilified her--maintaining that to fill such a ditch to a navigable depth would lower the lake levels ruinously. Even Canada has glowered. They have accused Chicago of having lowered the levels ruinously already with her sewage disposal canal and added insult to injury by declaring that Chicago sewage pollutes the entire Great Lakes system (excepting Lake Superior). Lately, with the Chicago-Gulf project pending in the Senate, the Chicago Tribune, has served its public by returning the insult, showing that Detroit "spews," that Toledo "defiles," that Cleveland pollutes and lies about it, that Erie, Buffalo and Toronto foster typhoid.

But the diversion issue has been the greatest. Engineers for the defense and engineers for the prosecution, Army engineers and Canadian engineers, have examined and re-examined the causes of an undeniable lowering of Great Lakes levels. Their reports have shown that the Chicago drainage canal can be charged with only a small fraction of the shrinkage. Nature, and men in cities other than Chicago, have done the rest. The engineers stated just how much effect various degrees of diversion at Chicago would have on the levels in general; pointed out means of preventing any lowering outside of Lake Michigan (by control dams similar to those at Lake Superior's outlet). But still the wrangling went on. Nothing is more invidious than intersectional politics. Regardless of engineering figures, Chicago was to be denied diversion in principle.

Shrewd Illinois congressmen, chiefly Representative Martin Madden, put the Chicago project into the Rivers and Harbors Appropriations Act of the 69th Congress. It called for only $3,500,000 but if passed it would establish the principle of diversion. But there the provision stuck, a contributing factor to the whole bill's long delay. Only last week was it pried loose, and then by a former enemy, Senator Willis of Ohio. Coached by sage Representative Theodore Burton of Ohio, Senator Willis proposed an amendment, "That nothing in this act shall be construed as authorizing any diversion of water from Lake Michigan." This amendment the midwesterners, who had sought a version reading ". . . does not affect in any way the question of diversion . . ." were obliged to accept in a compromise conference. The Senate adopted the Willis phrase; in other words, passed the question of diversion along to the Supreme Court to decide. The House, aligned by Representatives Dempsey of New York and Burton of Ohio was ready to do the same.

Chicago thus had authority for its ditch 9 feet deep and 200 feet wide from Utica, Ill., to Grafton, Ill.--but no authority to fill it with lake water. Army officials, uninterested in sectionalism but keen for a central U. S. waterway, believed that the Secretary of War could furnish the necessary authority. That, said Ohioans and others, remains to be adjudicated.