711.42157SA29/1273
Extract From President Roosevelt’s Press Conference
At the press conference at the White House this morning a correspondent said that the St. Lawrence Treaty will come to a vote this [Page 969] afternoon and it looks as though the vote will be against the President.62 A correspondent asked if the President could give the press any comment on that.
For background use only, the President said there are two phases of it: one is perfectly simple; the other, more difficult. The first is that whether the Treaty goes through this afternoon or not makes no difference at all. The St. Lawrence seaway will be built. That is perfectly obvious. If one can visualize the whole navigation problem, it is obvious that man is going to follow the lead of nature, whether it goes through today or next week makes little difference, it is going through. We have today a seaway practically from the top end of Lake Superior down through the Sault Locks, Lake Michigan, down through the Windsor Locks, through Lake Ontario down to where the St. Lawrence begins. In the St. Lawrence there are three rapids. One has already been circumvented near Cornwall. They have practically completed the power development and as a part of that power development for just a very small sum they can add locks. The lowest point is at La Chine. There is already a Canal. The Canadians can dig it from 12 feet to 30 feet without building a dam. That leaves only the top, the waterfall known as the International Rapids. Canada already has a 12 foot canal around the International Rapids. It isn’t the least bit necessary to develop power, which of course calls for a dam. It would be a perfectly proper thing and perfectly feasible thing for Canada to enlarge the international section of the Canal on the Canadian side of the river without ever building a dam. Canada doesn’t need the water power. It has a lot of it. If Canada were to do that on the Canadian side of the river, it would be a Canadian seaway. Mind you, the amount necessary to do that would be less than $100,000,000. It would be a Canadian seaway from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the Great Lakes. That seaway would be 100 per cent under the control of Canada, and if Canada wanted to be mean—and lots of governments and people are mean to their neighbors—so far as treaties go Canada has an absolute legal right—not a moral right—to let Canadian and British ships use that seaway free, but charge a toll to American citizens. If you look at it purely from a national point of view, not a commercial or humane point of view, if we don’t go along with Canada in the development of this seaway, there is no question of the Canadian right to build a Canadian seaway and discriminate against all American vessels. If Canada were to do that, British and Canadian ships could use that seaway free of charge and it would be [Page 970] prohibitive for American ships to use it. That is a distinct and definite legal right, if we do not go along and join her in building it. There is another phase of this: A certain Senator said he was going to vote against the treaty because of the Mississippi and the taking of water out of Lake Michigan. The President asked him if he thought we had any right to divert water over and above the needs for drinking and health purposes from one watershed into another, and the President told him a story of an old case in up state New York. A fellow had a very nice property on level ground through which ran a river. People down the stream had grist mills and he didn’t have any water power. He had a bright idea that by cutting a little ditch through a little hill on his property he could run this water over into the watershed of another little river and get a fifty foot drop. He thought he could take water out of this river through his ditch, drop it on a wheel, and put it in another river. Unfortunately, he ran up against what is known in common law as the old right of the man farther down the stream. The owners of the mills down the stream brought suit, pointing out that since 1450 it has been the English rule on watersheds that you have the right to take water out of the stream, but have to put it back into the river. You can’t divert it into some other watershed. The Senator was a lawyer. He admitted it, but said international law is different. The President said there is no case showing international law different. Then the Senator said, “Never mind whether international law is different or not, we are going to try to take all the water we want out of Lake Michigan and put it in the Mississippi, no matter what anybody else says.” The President pointed out to the correspondents this is perfectly clear cut. The Government does believe in the common law and believes we have no right to injure our neighbor, Canada, by diverting water from the Great Lakes into another watershed, as the fellow in up state New York wanted to do. Chicago is entitled to all the water it wants for drinking and for health purposes and Canada has gone farther and given them enough water by treaty to give them pretty decent navigation to the Mississippi—not for ocean going vessels, but a nine foot draft. The thing is going through. There is going to be a seaway just as sure as God made little apples and the President would like to see it done by joint action of Canada and the United States. If we don’t go along with that, Canada has a perfect right to build an all-Canadian seaway and discriminate against us, if she so desires.
A correspondent then enquired whether in other words the President will not send the treaty back to Congress. The President said it will go back in some form.
- See Congressional Record, vol. 78, pt. 4, pp. 4474–4475.↩