No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2014
Sometime in the future, I hope that there will be published an exhaustive account of one of the most revealing episodes in the recent history of our two countries. I refer to the propaganda for and against the proposed development of a great navigation and power project on the International Rapids Section of the St. Lawrence River.
Doubtless other political movements in our history have a public significance even greater than that of the St. Lawrence seaway. But the St. Lawrence project probably offers to historians, to political scientists, and to economists, a more illuminating study of the way in which our democracies act, or fail to act, under the drives of conflicting pressure groups and of conflicting social philosophies than does any other political controversy of recent years. This is true because the underlying motives of the people who have taken part in the fight for this project are more clear-cut and less camouflaged than those involved, say, in controversies about the protective tariff, or about the merits of American isolationism versus interventionism in international affairs. So broad is the significance of this case study in the realm of economic and social motives— so critical is its import for our democratic way of life—that I shall return to it later even at the expense of cutting short my comments on the merits of the St. Lawrence project itself.
2 [United States, Dept. of Commerce]. St. Lawrence Survey. 1. History of St. Lawrence Project. 2. Shipping Services on St. Lawrence River. 3. Potential Traffic on St. Lawrence Seaway. 4. Effect of St. Lawrence Seaway upon Existing Harbors. 5. St. Lawrence Seaway and Future Transportation Requirements. 6. Economic Effects of St. Lawrence Power Project. 7. Summary Report, including the National Defense Aspects of the St. Lawrence Project. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, Superintendent of Documents. 1941. Pp. 39, 40, 342, 71, 83, 126, 147.Google Scholar
2 In an opposition pamphlet dated February, 1942, the Buffalo Chamber of Commerce makes an even wilder assertion as to the possibilities of Beauharnois. This plant, it alleges, “can furnish any additional power requirtd up to 1,400,000 h.p. in from one and one-half to two years.”
3 Willis, R. B., “The St. Lawrence Seaway” (Quarterly Review of Commerce, VIII (4), 1941, 249–303).Google Scholar