Mr. MCCORMICK. The Illinois and Michigan Canal is the subject of a treaty with Canada. The old treaty says that the citizens of Canada have equal right of transportation with our own citizens upon all the waters of the Lakes and all waters connecting the Lakes with the Gulf of Mexico, and all canals connecting the Lakes with the Gulf of Mexico existing, and all that shall be built in the future. I can not quote you the exact language to-day, but I can get it when I go back to my office.

General DAVIS. There is a long controversy with England as to the right to navigate the St. Lawrence River on the part of Americans, and it has been contended that the St. Lawrence River on our part below Ontario should be regarded as an arm of the sea; and in reply to that contention the British Government have contended that if the Erie Canal, for example, were thrown open to Canadian commerce without charge, they would be willing on their part to throw open the St. Lawrence River and its tributary canals to us. I would not be surprised if there was such a treaty as you mention. There is a good deal of treaty work of that kind.

Mr. STEVENS. Now, Mr. Walker, if any freight were billed or transported in this canal down to the Mississippi River down to the borders of Missouri, that would make it interstate, would it not, and bring it under the control of the Federal Government?

Mr. WALKER. Well, I do not know. The Federal Government is reaching out in that way, so that I do not know how it would be. Mr. STEVENS. Would it not do that?

Mr. WALKER. I hardly thought so, because of a grant to the State. Mr. STEVENS. But Congress can not grant away its constitutional authority to regulate commerce?

Mr. WALKER. No; but the mere fact, it seems to me, that I dig a canal myself or have a warehouse off a mile from the Illinois River and I dig a canal myself to the Illinois River and make the connection and transport freight down there does not, it seems to me, necessarily involve the idea that the Federal Government should have any control over the rate which I may charge on my own canal.

Mr. STEVENS. If you have a warehouse and are a common carrier the Federal Government would have, would it not?

Mr. WALKER. Yes; in that case it would. If the effect of the sewage is to destroy the channel, that is something that the Federal Government does not want, because it would then be destroying something given by the authority of Congress.

Mr. STEVENS. General Davis's idea is that we have the authority to regulate the matter in some way.

Mr. WALKER. You would not have the authority to destroy if the effect of digging the sewer, as contended, would have the effect of destroying the canal. In that case even you would not have the power to do that. You could regulate, but not destroy.

Mr. STEVENS. It sometimes amounts to the same thing, you know. Mr. WALKER. Yes; some of the railroads think so, but that is not the intention of Congress, of course.

General DAVIS. There have been quite a number of decisions since 1890, when Congress began to legislate actively on that subject, and occasionally I find it necessary to go over them, and I find they very

scrupulously regard the right of States in that respect, both as to construction of bridges and piers, and I have thus far found that the legislation as to waters by Congress within a State does not exclude municipal or State control. That is the case as to the Chicago River and the Calumet River.

Mr. WALKER. Of course any legislation of Congress ought to be, and I think would be, in aid of the commerce. The Federal Government would simply undertake to regulate the commerce and not attempt to regulate the channel. They certainly would not regulate the channel, because the State of Illinois some years ago, when the Hennepin Canal was started, passed an act giving to the Federal Government the Illinois and Michigan Canal if they would accept it. They would not accept it. I do not think the Federal Government would have any right to come into the Illinois and Michigan Canal and excavate it, or part of it at all, but it could only control the traffic thereon. But that is far away from the present proposition.

Mr. STEVENS. Do you desire to say anything further?

Mr. WALKER. No, sir.

Mr. WILSON. Mr. McCormick, the president of the drainage commission, is here this morning.

Mr. STEVENS. We will hear Mr. McCormick.

STATEMENT OF MR. ROBERT R. MCCORMICK, PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES, SANITARY DISTRICT OF CHICAGO.

Mr. STEVENS. You are the proponent of the bill No. 24271?
Mr. McCORMICK. Yes, sir.

Mr. STEVENS. Will you please state your views?

Mr. MCCORMICK. Yes, sir. Before beginning I would like to correct Mr. Walker in a mistake that he inadvertently made. He stated he was representing the governor of Illinois, and through him the State. Mr. Walker is mistaken in that.

Mr. WALKER. I was sent by the governor personally.

Mr. McCORMICK. The governor told me he had no views on the subject, and wished me to elaborate my views so that he could make up his mind and see what was correct. You know he has been elected only two years and has not had time to master all the details of the matter. Mr. WALKER. I came here at the personal request of the governor, and not at the request of the canal commissioners.

Mr. McCORMICK. He informed me that you appeared at the request of the canal commissioners.

Mr. WALKER. That was on Monday?

Mr. MCCORMICK. Yes, and to-day is Wednesday.

Mr. WALKER. He telephoned me to come to Springfield last Wednesday, and asked my opinion with reference to the situation, and I gave it to him, and he asked me to come to Washington.

Mr. STEVENS. I do not think that is important, gentlemen. What we want here is the facts.

A

Mr. MCCORMICK. I want to go into the history of this matter. great deal can be brought out before we go into the case. I have not gone into the law because the Attorney-General or the Judge Advocate-General held that the title was in the United States, while Mr.

Walker holds that it is in the State. However this may be, I only want it to wind up where it belongs in the sanitary district.

In 1822 and 1827 the Congress passed statutes which resulted in the construction of the canal. The canal was opened in 1848 to traffic. It was not finished, however, in accordance with the plans on which it was begun, because the funds obtained by borrowing money and by the sale of land were insufficient for that purpose. The canal was more or less successful in the succeeding years, but not entirely successful as a waterway; but its most successful years were in the late fifties and during the civil war.

In 1864 the drainage situation became serious in Chicago, and an act was passed by the Illinois legislature stating that Chicago wanted to drain itself and reciting the fact that the canal from Bridgeport to Joliet had not been dug to its entire depth, and that digging it to its proper depth would be equally advantageous to Chicago as a sewer and to Joliet as a waterway. As I remember, at the time of the fire, this money was refunded to Chicago, a pure gift by the State.

It is rather interesting to know that even in 1864 the canal was looked upon by the commissioners more as a revenue producer than as a waterway. It is interesting, because in recent years, as laid down by our supreme court, as a waterway it was abandonedMr. STEVENS. In what way did it produce revenue?

Mr. MCCORMICK. In order to facilitate the deepening of it, they closed the canal a month earlier, closed the navigation, and opened it a month later, which evidently prevented its being used for transportation. At the same time the city of Chicago was required to pay the canal an estimated amount of lost tolls, so that as a revenue producer it was better with navigation partially stopped than if navigation had not been stopped.

Later on Chicago again, through its drainage needs, spent still more money. It installed and operated pumps to get a greater current through the canal, and this water was afterwards used at Lockport and, I believe, at Joliet, for water-power purposes.

Mr. STEVENS. Who obtained the revenue from that!

Mr. McCORMICK. The State obtained the revenue, what there was. Mr. SCHILLING. The canal commission?

Mr. MCCORMICK. Yes; it was not paid into the State treasury. In 1870 in the public mind the idea had become so sure that the canal was no longer a practical affair that they put it in the new constitution of the State that the credit of the State should not be pledged for any more improvements to the canal, nor should any appropriation from the general revenues be made for the maintenance or improvement of it. In spite of this fact appropriations were actually made, until the matter was taken up in the Supreme Court by Mr. Burke, and in the case of Burke v. Snively the appropriation was stricken out in the supreme court of Illinois.

Mr. STEVENS. That is held invalid? Mr. MCCORMICK. Yes; held invalid. As I say, at one time the canal was undoubtedly a used and navigable waterway. But that was in the days of small things, when a small canal could be prosperous. But as time went on and the rest of the country grew, the canal was outgrown and became no longer useful.

In 1875 the tolls amounted to about $100,000, or, in fact, $101,000. The expenditures were about $80,000. In 1901 the expenditures were

about the same, but the tolls were $8,000, and in 1905 the tolls were $4,000.

Mr. STEVENS. Where does the money come from to pay the expenses? Mr. MCCORMICK. The money in 1900 came in a very queer way. The supreme court rendered a decision in the case of Burke v. Snively I can quote the very words to you, which will probably be better than trusting my memory. The supreme court of Illinois holds that

The canal has practically fallen into disuse for any of the purposes of transportation of either person or property, and has been perverted to mere commercial purposes of supplying water power to those along its banks and selling privileges to cut ice from its pools. It is no longer a highway of commerce.

That is found in 208 Illinois, page 58. Also, the canal has rented some of its property that I know of to various powder purposes, for storing dynamite, and has disposed of its property from time to time that it had not disposed of before.

Coming to modern times, the canal was not large enough to act as a sewer for Chicago or be practically a vein of commerce. Along in the eighties it became evident that Chicago had to seek some new means of drainage. I need not go into the various plans that were considered, but the one adopted was that the sewage of Chicago should be taken over the divide at Summit and deposited in the Des Plaines River, and taken on down the Illinois River to the Mississippi. The experts said that the sewage could be diluted to the extent of 20,000 cubic feet per minute for over 100,000 inhabitants.

Then the drainage canal was built. If this canal had been built simply as a drainage canal, taking into consideration the purification of the sewage by dilution, it could have been built at half its cost, or perhaps a little more. As you know, the flow of water depends upon the utilization of the topography of the cross section of the State. The cheapest thing to do would be to cut a comparatively steeper canal and a great deal narrower one. That would have given a current of from 3 to 6 miles an hour, and the same amount of water could have gone through the smaller channel, but it could not have been navigable. The sanitary district act was passed specifically making the drainage canal a navigable stream; and not only that, but a deep waterway a thing which has been advocated since the time of Pere Marquette, practically. The original drainage law that I have with me recites that in the rock sections the canal shall be nowhere less than 15 feet deep, and in the earth sections nowhere less than 14 feet deep.

In building this drainage canal the waterway feature was so strongly represented in the minds of the taxpayers of Chicago that they built the canal 22 feet deep throughout its entire length. If the canal were intended to be used merely for a sewer it could not only have been narrower, but they could have built truss bridges to span it, which would have been a great deal cheaper than bridges of a movable type. There is a great eight-track railroad bridge which of itself cost nearly $1,000,000. It could probably have been built for a hundred thousand dollars under the other plan. So it was on down the canal; there were 15 or 20 bridges built, all movable. It is obligatory under the law to operate those bridges all the time. The estimate by our bridge engineer is to the effect that to put in the machinery on those bridges alone will require another million and half dollars.

In order to get the flow of water necessary to meet the law-if I am not making myself clear I wish you would interrupt me, the matter is so familiar to me that I perhaps forget that others do not know so much about it—in order to get enough water through the canal they have to get a greater opening to the lake than was afforded by the canal in its former condition. The cheapest way to do that would have been to build a number of large conduits like that at Thirty-ninth street, because at one place the river goes very near the lake and then swings away from it, and by building three or four conduits plenty of water could have been brought in without taking it to the river. However, the navigation feature was still to the fore, and what the district did was to widen the river to 200 feet and also to take out the center bridges and substitute for them bridges of the bascule type. The sanitary district of Chicago, which is almost, as far as area is concerned, equal to the city of Chicago, widened it from 17 feet to 26 feet, and have placed over it from 7 to 15 bridges.

Now, I do not for a minute say that this was all done for the purpose of navigation. It was done primarily for purposes of drainage. But, having once decided to use a certain kind of drainage, a great deal more money has been spent to make it an available waterway. There is no question to my mind that if this work in the Chicago River had not been done by the sanitary district it would have been done sooner or later by the National Government, and the National Government has recognized, as a matter of fact, a certain portion of it, so far, if your present river and harbor bill passes, because it proposes to do on the northern branch what the Chicago sanitary district has done in the southern branch-that is, to bridge it, and has appropriated in the Senate $200,000 for that piece of work.

Up to date the drainage canal has cost about $52,000,000.

When it

is completed it will have cost about $75,000,000, or two-thirds of the entire cost of the deep waterway from Chicago to St. Louis, and about half the estimated cost of the waterway from Chicago to New Orleans. On the other hand, had the canal been purely a sewerage project, I have no hesitation in saying that the total amount could have been covered, up to date, by $25,000,000, and finally by $40,000,000. But, as I say, for the purpose of navigation, which was incorporated in the State law and added to voluntarily by the people in the sanitary district, the extra amount was advanced.

In view of this fact, and in view of the fact that the sanitary district by next summer will bave completed a waterway most of the distance 22 feet deep and the balance of the distance 10 feet deep, to what is known as the Upper Basin of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, there will be no further need of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, even for the fictitious waterway. It is about 2 feet deep now north of Joliet

Mr. LOVERING. How deep did you say?

Mr. MCCORMICK. Practically 2 feet deep; practically that.

Mr. WALKER. It is more than that when in operation. There were over $15,000 worth of tolls received from Joliet to Chicago last year. Mr. MCCORMICK. I think you are mistaken.

Mr. SCHILLING. Does that include the $10,000?

Mr. MCCORMICK. Not only has this enormous amount of money been spent for the waterway, but eventually over $1,000,000 will have