PAPERS OX GEOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY 371 



THE HEXXEPIX CAXAL 



EoBEET G. Buzzard, State Teachebs College, DeKalb 



The present session of Congress is confronted with 

 the problem of an international deep-waterway. The In- 

 ternational Commission studying the project of deepen- 

 ing the upper St. Lawrence Eiver has submitted its re- 

 port. The Congressmen from the Mississippi Eiver 

 valley and the Great Lakes are clamoring for the build- 

 ing of this watei'way. The news columns of the cereal re- 

 gion are broadcasting the benefits to the grain grower 

 such a waterway will bring about. From the current 

 propaganda one reads that the problem of cheap trans- 

 portation eastward will be solved by a thirty foot chan- 

 nel to the Great Lakes. To Chicago, Milwaukee and Du- 

 luth will come the seaboard advantages of Boston, New 

 York and Philadelphia. To the student of the trans- 

 portation problem which has grown with the develop- 

 ment of production in the upper Mississippi basin, this 

 clamor for a waterway eastward is but the latest of a 

 series of such agitations. The experience gained through 

 the use of the Hudson Eiver, the Erie Canal, the line of 

 the Great Lakes, the Erie-Ohio canals, the Hlinois and 

 Michigan Canal, and the other waterways which aided the 

 move of population westward, seems to have left indeli- 

 bly impressed on the minds of succeeding generations the 

 conception that waterways are the solution of all trans- 

 portation problems. 



"Within the bounds of our own state lies a not long since 

 completed example of the application of waterways to the 

 problem of inland transportation. Its conception, the 

 fervor of its agitation, the marked distress of the region 

 demanding it, the stick-to-it-iveness of the Congressmen 

 who made it a plank in their platforms, the twenty-seven 

 years of heckling before Congi'ess succumbed, the build- 

 ing of a waterway for a jDCople who had forgotten or 

 had never known why it was wanted, its maintenance 

 amid their hard roads and efficient railways, — in aU 

 this the Hennepin Canal exemplifies the effort our na- 

 tional government is putting forth towards solving in- 



