Furthermore this project has been endorsed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. On these two groups rests the responsibility for the security of our Nation. How the opponents of this project can scoff at the security aspects of this project in the face of the endorsement of the two boards directly responsible to the people for our country's security is difficult to understand. In supporting this project we are supporting our President, our Commander in Chief, who has proven by his record on the battlefield that he knows how to defend our country, and if anyone should know what is needed for our national security, it should be he.

I want to emphasize one other reason than national security why the St. Lawrence project should be built at once. Even as far away as is Kansas, this project will be of great direct benefits in cheapening our cost of grain shipments to markets and in building up the economic strength of the Midwest.

I will enumerate here no other of the many reasons this project should have the approval of this committee, and the Congress, as testimony will be presented by other witnesses far more conversant with these reason than I.

The Kansas State Grange, as loyal American citizens, supports this project in the interest of the security of our country-your country and ours-and because of its great economic value to the Nation, we urge this committee to rise above petty sectional difference of opinion, resist the pressures of the selfish interests who are opposing it, and follow the lead of our President by approving United States participation in the construction of the St. Lawrence seaway as provided in House Joint Resolution 104.

Mr. TEAGARDEN. I would like to make a short statement. Our State Grange of Kansas has been on record for years as favoring the building of the St. Lawrence seaway, and with the new bill we think that is a stronger bill than we have ever had and we would like to see this seaway built.

There is one thing not mentioned. I think it will help Kansas a lot in the movement of wheat. It will make a cheaper freight rate on the wheat and we can ship our wheat in cars a shorter distance and the cars come back to refill with wheat.

The wheat situation in Kansas at the present time is very critical. There will be a lot of wheat piled on the ground that cannot be moved. Mr. DONDERO. Thank you very much, Mr. Teagarden.

Mr. STEED. You also make a strong point about the advantages of the seaway for national defense. I would like to ask you if you think there will be no defense benefits from this seaway unless it is built with American money?

Mr. TEAGARDEN. I think there will be some, but if we are interested in it I think it will be a lot stronger than if Canada owns it all. Mr. STEED. How so?

Mr. TEAGARDEN. If you own an interest in something you have something to say about it. You can bargain and say what you are going to do.

Mr. STEED. Then you think unless we own an interest in it, Canada would not let us use it if it is needed for national defense?

Mr. TEAGARDEN. I wouldn't say that they might not, but if we own an interest in it we might have a lot more to say than if we didn't.

Mr. STEED. We still would not own enough of it to make it usable for national defense if Canada didn't want us to.

Mr. TEAGARDEN. If we own an interest in it we can come a lot closer to having something to say about it than if they own it all. It is like two fellows owning a truck

Mr. STEED. If we owned one part of the canal and Canada owned another part of it you still wouldn't own it up and down the seaway. Mr. TEAGARDEN. That is true.

Mr. MACHROWICZ. I think the witness should be permitted to answer that question. You started answering that question of the gentleman from Oklahoma. What were you going to say?

Mr. TEAGARDEN. I started to say that they would have something to say. When two of them own a vehicle they will help to control it. Mr. STEED. What do you visualize we might need in order to have some say in it from the standpoint of national defense?

Mr. TEAGARDEN. If we owned some part of it we would certainly have some say in it. Canada would not control it all.

Mr. DONDERO. Thank you very much for your statement, Mr. Teagarden. I wonder if the other witnesses who are near Washington would not give way to some of the others. I notice Mr. Martel of Detroit is here and Mr. Edelman and Mr. Ellis. I wonder if you would defer your statements and let me call these gentlemen. Mr. Sanders, have you anything else?

Mr. SANDERS. I have one other statement by the Indiana State master including his resolution favoring this project. I would like to file these if I may.

Mr. DONDERO. It will be filed in the record, without objection.

(The statement of the Indiana State master and his resolution are as follows:)

My name is Frank Jump. I own and operate a farm at Walton, Ind., and am master of the Indiana State Grange.

I appear before you today to endorse the legislation being considered by this committee providing for the participation of the United States in construction of the St. Lawrence seaway, jointly with Canada, as provided by House Joint Resolution 104 introduced by Representative George A. Dondero, of Michigan.

The Indiana State Grange has consistently supported legislation to authorize this development over a period of many years by its approval of the annual stand of approval by the National Grange year after year for more than two decades. The Indiana State Grange has also approved the project by resolution of its State grange convention.

The Indiana State Grange supports this legislation, and urges this committee to approve it, for the following reasons:

1. It is in the interest of the national security. We are fortified in this position by the recommendations of the President of the United States and the National Security Council, as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

2. It is in the interest of the economic welfare of our country. This has been incontrovertibly proved by expert witnesses thoroughly schooled in the economics of our country. My own midwestern agriculture desperately needs better access to the markets of the needy world. The St. Lawrence seaway will provide that.

3. It will greatly benefit and bring new economic expansion to the largest basic industry of our country, agriculture, so completely set forth in the testimony of the National Grange.

4. It will not cost the American taxpayer anything as it is 100percent self-liquidating from the revenues it will produce in the form of tolls for the use of navigation facilities.

5. It is going to be built anyway. Canada has determined that. In our opinion this country cannot afford to stand aside and let a foreign country both own and control a vital waterway that will lead straight to the heart of these United States, no matter how close and friendly that country may be.

6. In our opinion it is high time the Congress of the United States asserted its sovereignty and refused to be dictated to and influenced by a small group of selfish interests who hold their own economic interests above the welfare and security of the Nation.

On behalf of the Indiana State Grange I urge this committee to approve House Joint Resolution 104 in the national interest.

(The following resolution was passed by the Indiana State Grange at their annual session in West Lafayette, Ind., in October 1952:) Since the St. Lawrence seaway and power project is urgently needed as a defense project and may prove to be invaluable to this Nation in case of another world war;

Since the project as planned at present is a self-liquidating project and will pay for itself;

Since it will be of great value in shipping farm and industrial products of Indiana and the Nation to world markets at lower freight rates;

Since Canada is ready to build the project alone and since we will ship 90 percent of the traffic and pay toll to Canada if she builds it without our help, thus paying for our share even though we do not joint in building the project; therefore, be it

Resolved, That the Indiana State Grange favor our National Government joining with the Canadian Government at the earliest possible date to build this seaway and power project, thus giving the Great Lakes area the benefit of water transportation rates to the markets of the world.

Adopted.

Mr. SANDERS. I will clear the way for any out-of-town witnesses. If you expect me to appear later I will be glad to appear at any time. Mr. DONDERO. Is Mr. Martel of Detroit here?

STATEMENT OF JOHN W. EDELMAN, REPRESENTING TEXTILE WORKERS OF AMERICA AND LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE, CIO

Mr. EDELMAN. I can save some time by just asking permission if I may, to file at the conclusion of my statement a brief extract from a speech by Philip Murray on the St. Lawrence, which I just discovered today. I ask permission of the committee to file, in addition to the formal statement by the Congress of Industrial Organizations, a statement by its president, Walter Reuther, on Monday or Tuesday

next.

Mr. DONDERO. Without objection it will be included in the record. Mr. EDELMAN. During the past 8 or 9 years the Congress of Industrial Organizations has repeatedly urged the authorization and construction of the St. Lawrence seaway and power project.

Over and over again the CIO has advanced evidence to show that the interests opposing the St. Lawrence waterway have been utterly

mistaken in their professed belief that cheaper and easier water transportation on the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River, or cheaper electric power generated at the proposed power project would cause even temporary unemployment or impair the vested interests of certain railroads or coal mine owners. It is our position that far from harming the coal or rail industry, the development of these unique resources, the waterway and hydro facility, would through general expansion of the economy help rather than hurt these interests which have fought so stubbornly against this long needed improvement.

Although we shall confine our present testimony to limited aspects of this problem the CIO staff has studied the economics and the social implications of the legislation in its various aspects. We believe that this project is essential to our national defense. We take the view that the project is necessary to both the economy of the region and the industries that will be principally affected but that it represents an essential, inevitable and desirable technological advance.

The waste of the unique hydroelectric resources on the St. Lawrence has been nothing short of national scandal for years, especially as it relates to the flagrantly power-deficit area which the project will serve. From the standpoint of the vast army of wage earners, most of whom are CIO members, employed in the steel mills in the Ohio-Pennsylvania region, and to those whose employment is directly tied in with the steel industry in the key manufacturing centers of our Middle West, we see the seaway as an absolute requisite to the continued stability of these basic industries. In previous hearings the United Steel Workers of America (CIO) have given carefully reasoned and technically unassailable testimony to drive home the fact that it would be an economic sin to deprive the industries in which their members are employed of the simplest and cheapest possible method of obtaining ore from the newly discovered Labrador fields.

The CIO finds itself unable to support House Joint Resolution 104 without pointing out that in our judgment the legislation is not complete. On the other hand, we will not take a dog-in-the-manger attitude toward a measure which does not go as far as we believe to be necessary. Our principal criticisms of House Joint Resolution 104

are:

(1) That it is incomplete in respect to navigation;

(2) It has the major defect of omitting vital safeguards in respect to power.

We strongly favor participation by the United States and Canada in the financing, building, and operation of the seaway and power project. We have favored the development of navigation facilities from Duluth to Chicago to the International Rapids on a selfliquidating, toll-paying basis, and believe that there is no good reason why the whole job should not be authorized now since this is the logical conclusion of the partial action proposed in this bill.

As we understand House Joint Resolution 104, this legislation does the biggest single part of the whole job and leaves to other legislation the deepening of the connecting channels in the upper lakes, and other complementary improvements. Clearly this piecemeal approach has its drawbacks. With this important qualification we support House Joint Resolution 104 as doing a vital part of a very much needed and long overdue job.

The power phase of the St. Lawrence project must be coordinated with the navigation, if for no other reason than to spread the cost of the total operation. We must, therefore, urge that House Joint Resolution 104 be amended to include the following provisions:

1. We strongly advocate Federal ownership and operation of the hydroelectric plant. As a less desirable alternative we insist that if New York State is delegated the authority to construct these plants that the following conditions be met:

(a) That a fair share of the power generated at the International Rapids be allocated to the New England States, and that the Federal Government reserve the right to review the quotas assigned the various States;

(b) Transmission be handled by public agencies;

(c) Local distribution with customary "first availability" to municipal or publicly owned plants and to farm cooperatives;

(d) That the operating agency be given full authority to bargain collectively with the freely chosen representatives of its employees and to sign contracts with the union or unions representing those employees.

It is not enough for the Congress, we believe, to authorize the power project without specifying these necessary conditions as to the distribution and sales cost of this important bloc of power. There will be no assurance that the low cost of producing electricity on the St. Lawrence will be passed on to those who need low-cost current most urgently unless traditional Federal preferential policies are specified. Moreover, the States within economical distance of the dam site must be given positive guaranties of some definite proportion of the total power which will be generated.

The farmers in New York State and New England, speaking through their electric cooperatives and other organizations, have shown the urgent need for additional supplies of low-cost power for the dairymen and other agriculturists in this power-deficit area. Representative Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., of New York, in recent testimony before a joint Senate-House committee, illustrated very vividly the consequences of the lack of power and the high average cost of electricity in this region by pointing to the substantial subsidies which the Department of Defense was obliged to pay in order to obtain vitally needed aluminum from the plant at Massena, N. Y.

In substantiation of our recommendations for an allocation of St. Lawrence power to New England, I wish to call this committee's attention to report of July 1951 on the New England Economy for the Council of Economic Advisers. This report was written by a group of outstanding New England economists and bankers based on research supplied by an even larger group of experts on the economy of the region. Many Members of Congress of both parties have commented on the very fine quality of that study and analysis. On page 116 of this report, in a section dealing with hydroelectric power in New England, the committee favors the St. Lawrence project, provided only that a substantial bloc of the current be assigned to the New England States.

May I point out to the Committee on Public Works that while one of the CIO affiliates, representing employees of private utility com

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