1948 than there is on the Panama Canal, and 16,000,000 tons more on the Ohio that year than there was on the Panama Canal. Mr. PICKETT. You are opposed to the toll features of the proposal? Mr. RANKIN. If I had my way, I would eliminate the tolls. Mr. PICKETT. But if you cannot get them eliminated, are you going to support the bill with the tolls in it? Mr. RANKIN. I did before, and I see no reason for changing my attitude. I am more interested in the American people, and especially this vast area, what we call the Mississippi Valley, than I am in the toll proposition, but I do think that this project ought to be free of tolls, just as the Panama Canal ought to be free of tolls for coastwise trade, which no foreign country can do. Mr. PICKETT. Will the gentleman yield? Mr. RANKIN. I have been of that opinion for the past 30 years. Mr. PICKETT. I will be very brief. It is admitted by all that this project could be divided and at one time construct the seaway and at another time the power generation facilities. Now, if we had to choose one or the other, which would you take first? Mr. RANKIN. I do not see how you could divide it. Mr. PICKETT. It has been testified that it can be done. Mr. RANKIN. You know, some fellows have great imaginations. But I do not see how you are going to separate the power development from the navigation. The question right here is this: This is the place where you are going to have to dig your deep channel, as I understand it, and I cannot see where it could be separated. Mr. PICKETT. Of course, we would have to leave that to the engineers, but if it were decided that we could build the seaway without the power generation, would you be for that? Mr. RANKIN. I think you had better just let it go through as it is and develop both of them. Mr. PICKETT. Suppose it gets down to a question where we take one or the other instead of both. Mr. RANKIN. You could not develop the transportation without developing the power unless, you just dug the canal and dammed the power up and let it stand there. I do not see how it could be done. Mr. PICKETT. It is an engineering problem, and I would not debate it with you, and I do not think I would get very far anyway. Mr. RANKIN. We had a few fellows who tried to do the same thing. They tried to cut the Grand Coulee Dam off and make it a low dam. They tried to meddle with the Tennessee. You know, it is a hard matter to find out who the real friends of a project are here when they come in all dressed up with an armload of books under their arms or a lot of statistics. You know, an Irishman said there are are three kinds of lies: a lie, a damned lie, and statistics. Sometimes they bring the wrong statistics in to try to mislead the committee. This is just a plan open-and-shut proposition as I see it, and I do not see how you can separate it. Mr. PICKETT. Assuming it can be done, based on the testimony that has been brought to this committee, would you be in favor of the seaway without the power? Mr. RANKIN. It would be impossible. No; I am not in favor of leaving the power out. Mr. PICKETT. You would not be in favor of it? Mr. RANKIN. No, sir. I am not in favor of leaving this power out. Mr. PICKETT. Would you be in favor of the power without the seaway? Mr. RANKIN. If that is the only way to get it, I would develop that power. If that were the only way to get it. Mr. PICKETT. Now, Mr. Rankin, under the terms of the bill and the testimony that has been adduced before the committee by the sponsors of it in the administrative end of the Government, in order to make the disposition of the power that is to be generated under a completed project there must be a great deal of negotiation and some agreements entered into about the disposition of that power. Do you not think this Congress ought to know what the agreements are and what is going to be done with the power before we approve the project? Mr. RANKIN. You ought to write it into the bill just as we did in the Tennessee Valley Authority bill. Mr. PICKETT. And in order to write it into the bill we would have to know there was some character of an agreement between the persons that are involved, would we not? Mr. RANKIN. Let me say to the gentleman from Texas that you can generate electricity with natural gas in Texas about as cheaply as we can on the Tennessee River, yet last year, or in 1949, Texas used approximately the same amount of power that Tennessee did. The people of Tennessee paid $75,000,000 for theirs, and the people of Texas paid $184,000,000 for theirs. What I am trying to do is get these rates down all over the country. Mr. PICKETT. That was on account of the fact that we used more, did we not? Mr. RANKIN. You used the same amount. Mr. PICKETT. Used the same amount of power? Mr. RANKIN. Well, you used in Texas 9,273,000,000, and Tennessee used 9,142,000,000. Tennessee paid $75,540,000, and Texas paid $184,798,000. Mr. PICKETT. Is that the State of Tennessee you are talking about? Mr. RANKIN. Yes; that is the State of Tennessee, in which the Tennessee Valley is located, and from which they get practically all their power. Mr. PICKETT. That does not encompass the TVA area? Mr. RANKIN. The same rates apply throughout the TVA area. Mr. PICKETT. The power you talked about there was power in the State of Tennessee alone? Mr. RANKIN. The State of Tennessee. That was in 1949. Mr. PICKETT. Do you not think though, in view of the necessity for the large number of negotiations and agreements that have got to be made before we could write anything in the bill that would be satisfactory, that we ought to know what those agreements are going to be? Mr. RANKIN. You ought to write it in, as I said. Senator Norris and I wrote ours into the bill creating the Tennessee Valley Authority. We had no trouble about it. Mr. PICKETT. Thank you. Mr. RANKIN. If you will take the TVA bill and copy it you will be all right. That is, copy section 12. Section 12 is the one we had our battle over. I thank the gentlemen of the committee for your courtesy and I hope I have not taken up too much of your time. Mr. BLATNIK. Just one question, Mr. Rankin. Mr. Rankin, I have been very impressed here with your detailed knowledge and familiarity with the major power projects of the country and the water transport systems. Would you be prepared, Mr. Rankin, to make a statement as to how the economic feasibility or the economic justification of this dual power-navigation project on the St. Lawrence compares in your estimation with other major power and navigation projects? Mr. RANKIN. It absolutely fits in. They are both so interwoven that I do not see how you can separate them. Mr. BLATNIK. We have every reason to believe that we would get from the St. Lawrence dual project the same benefits and perhaps more than we have already gotten from the other projects such as TVA, Bonneville, Grand Coulee, and the others? Mr. RANKIN. Absolutely. Mr. PICKETT. Mr. Rankin, it occurred to me that you might wish to change your statement that you favored the Panama Canal and this project free of tolls. Did you mean free of tolls for the United States? Mr. RANKIN. That is what I meant. I do not mean that I would give every foreign country free tolls through the Panama Canal, but to Americans doing coastwise trade, because no foreign country can do coastwise trade in the United States, and we are entitled to the benefits of the Panama Canal which are now being denied us. The CHAIRMAN. We have in our presence Congressman Kilburn, of New York, who is one of the sponsors of the bill. We will now hear from Mr. Kilburn. Mr. KILBURN. I will not take any time, Mr. Chairman. I just want to tell the chairman of the committee that you were kind enough to put my statement in the first day of your hearings, and I would rather have the committee listen to the Army engineers and to some of the technical advisers than me, because about all I could do would be to repeat my statement. I thank the committee very much for their courtesy. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. We will adjourn until tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock. ST. LAWRENCE SEAWAY WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 1951 COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC WORKS, The committee met, pursuant to adjournment, at 10:15 a. m., Hon. Charles A. Buckley (chairman) presiding. The CHAIRMAN. The meeting is called to order, a quorum being present. The first witness to appear before the committee will be the former Governor of the State of New York, the now United States Senator from the State of New York, Senator Lehman. STATEMENT OF HON. HERBERT H. LEHMAN, UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK Senator LEHMAN. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, this is my third appearance before this distinguished committee of the House over the course of 10 years in support of the St. Lawrence seaway and power project resolution. My first appearance was in 1941 while I was Governor of New York. My second appearance was last year as a Member of the Senate. I am happy and pleased at the privilege of again appearing before this committee, whose new chairman is a Representative from a district in my own State and an old and valued friend. In my testimony today I shall try to repeat as little as possible of the testimony I gave before this committee less than a year ago. The majority of the members of this committee were present on that occasion also. There is so much that is new in the situation now contronting us and in the increased urgency for the approval of the pending resolution that there is little need for me to repeat what I said on that occasion. Yet some of the facts and circumstances are unchanged and I shall refer to some of them. Certainly the reasons which impelled me and others to support this great project a year ago and 10 years ago have been intensified and dramatized in great measure by recent events. What was a good project in the past is a vital project today. It is a project essential to our national security in a day and an hour when our national security is being challenged, and with it the security of all the free world. I need not burden you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee, with my own views on the necessity for this project from a national defense viewpoint. You have heard the views of the Secretary of State, of the Secretary of National Defense, and of the Director of Defense Mobilization, all of whom have attested to the vital importance of this undertaking. The Secretary of State, I believe, inserted into the record of these hearings the views of the permanent Canadian-United States Joint Board on Defense, which recommended and I quote, "that the two Governments take immediate action to implement the 1941 St. Lawrence agreement as a vital measure for their common defense." General Marshall, if the committee will recall, reached equally positive conclusions in the statement submitted to this committee on his behalf. The committee is likewise aware of the views of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, of General Eisenhower, and of many other qualified military experts as to the military and strategic importance of the St. Lawrence project. These are the men upon whom we must depend for advice and guidance in military and strategic matters. Upon their judgment rests, in a major sense, the safety and security of our country. Upon our willingness as Members of Congress to support and implement that judgment rests the fate of this Nation. I believe that to be as true of their judgment on the St. Lawrence project as of their judgment on the size of the Armed Forces, on the location of military bases, and upon the equipment of our fighting troops abroad. Even if I were not committed to the support of this project through years of advocacy of it and through a profound belief in its desirability for the welfare of this Nation, I would, myself, feel compelled to set every other criterion aside and to support this undertaking on the basis of its importance to the defenses of the United States and of Canada. You will note that I have included, as did the Secretary of State, the defense interests of Canada as being of significant importance in determining my judgment on this matter. Certainly we must keep in mind the intimate and inextricable connection between the security and welfare of the United States and the security and welfare of Canada. Although Canada and the United States are two separate and sovereign Nations, there is a close community of interest between us such as does not exist and has never existed between any other two nations in history. What is necessary for the welfare of Canada contributes also to the welfare of the United States. What is desirable for the security and defense of Canada is important to the security and the defense of the United States. The time is long past when we in this country or in this Congress can say of a project or undertaking, "If Canada wants it, let Canada do it. It is her business." Defense, security, and welfare are everybody's business. Never was this more true than in the case of the United States and Canada. The fact that Canada is anxious about the St. Lawrence project is and should be, in itself, I believe, a strong and compelling reason for its approval. I need not belabor this point, for the St. Lawrence project is as vital to the interest of the United States as to that of Canada. As members of this committee may know, similar legislation has been introduced in the Senate. Twenty-six members of the Senate, of whom I am proud to be one, have joined in sponsoring a bill identical with some of those now pending before this committee. We have every hope of getting favorable action in our body. I believe that a majority of the members of the Foreign Relations Committee |