it until I came to Washington, was the desire of the city to pass through the canal with those two trunk-line sewers, which in the nature of things would elevate its navigable features at those points, because our engineers in taking surveys concluded that the top of the sewers would be somewhat above the bottom of the canal; and unless we got such permission from the United States any taxpayer might make the claim that the United States Government had some rights in those dams; and although finally the courts might construe it that the State of Illinois had supreme jurisdiction, there would be enough there to make a peg to hang a legal hat on.

Mr. STEVENS. Do you contend that the United States has a right to destroy the navigability of navigable waterways?

Mr. SCHILLING. We take the position here, and our appearance is based on the assumption, that the United States may have such a reversionary right, and not that our act would impair the navigability of the canal; because we deem that the case of the State of Illinois, which Mr. McCormick has related to you, would imply a desire on the part of the State to abandon that portion of the canal through which we shall go with our sewers. So that we assume, with all of this legislation on the part of the State, that there will be no trouble for us to secure a permit from them to do this. But in the absence of a permit from the United States Government, we think it would give any fighting property owner sufficient standing in the court to cause litigation for many years, perhaps, before the issues could be finally adjudicated. Meanwhile our people were dying out there with pestilence and disease because they had no drainage.

Now, with the interest that I represent, the dominant desire is to construct those sewers and not care particularly who those lands are to be passed on to. That is one of the unfortunate positions that I find myself in as representing the board of local improvements. Mr. McCormick is on the one side asking that these lands be passed to the State of Illinois and that a provision be made that then the State shall pass them over to the sanitary district. Against that I have no objection at all, except to say that if this bill is passed--and I want Mr. McCormick to listen to this-if this bill was passed by Congress and the State of Illinois paid no attention to it and did not pass the lands over to the sanitary district we would not get our sewer, very likely, and we would be just where we were before the bill was passed; and the State of Illinois, through its canal commissioners and its legal department, might contend, just as Mr. Walker has contended here. this morning, that the State of Illinois has up to date violated no agreement with the United States Goverment, and for that reason the United States Government had no right to make cessions of the lands which were given to the State of Illinois under certain agreements and conditions, all of which, up to date, had not been violated; and if they finally won out, which again, perhaps, would be after years of litigation, we would still be there without a sewer.

Before I left the city of Chicago we had the citizens' committee appropriate $7,500 to put our force to work--all our office force-and the property owners within that area to make a list, and as soon as the list the scrapping sheet was completed they would be prepared to hold a public meeting. I am citing this to show you with what interest we are proceeding to try to drain these 24 square miles of territory on behalf of the people who are already living there-a ter

ritory which is capable of maintaining a million people and which is held back because the people have no drainage and they do not desire to live there, and those who have homes there are thinking about leaving because of the danger they are constantly subject to by reason of having no way of getting rid of their sewage.

Now, I think that owing to the lateness of the session and the different interests that play around this bill, the opposition to it, possibly Mr. Walker and Mr. McCormick, might join with me in giving consent that this committee should substitute a simple permit to the city of Chicago for the construction of the Western avenue and the Kedzie avenue sewers through the Illinois and Michigan Canal, with an outfall into the sanitary channel. After that we can take up the bill which has been introduced here by Mr. Wilson and fight that out when we have a little more time, and thus we will not cause 60,000 people to continue suffering there as they are doing now simply because there is a contention here as to who these lands belong to and where they should go. That does not help those people any. And I now formally ask Mr. Wilson and Mr. McCormick whether they would not join the city of Chicago in asking for such a permit, and I am willing to here agree that it should read on condition that similar conditions should be granted by the State of Illinois.

Mr. LOVERING. How soon could that be done?

Mr. SCHILLING. All the clerical force of the board of improvement is working every night and every day now. I would like to have this permit, whether conditioned on the consent of the State to give a like permit or an independent permit. I think that possibly, as the general assembly is in session, we will get one from them. But I am perfectly willing, if that will satisfy Mr. Walker, that your consent should be conditioned upon the consent of the State of Illinois, and assuming that we will get that shaped up so that no property owner can go into court and say that the United States Government has a right to these lands, and then give a permit to construct these sewers, and thus overcome the impression that the board of improvement is trying to commit an illegal act by going over lands over which it has no right, and we can let the contract to start work about June for the construction of those sewers.

Mr. LOVERING. How long will it take to complete them?

Mr. SCHILLING. It would take, in my judgment, about two years to construct those two large trunk lines.

Mr. STEVENS. It seems to me from the statement that Mr. Walker has made the odd sections have already been sold and the United States has granted all of its rights. If the main sewer went down. through those sections, you do not need to come to Congress.

Mr. SCHILLING. That may be true, but I did not know it until this morning. I was always under the impression that 90 feet on each side of the canal was a continuous, unbroken right of way. Mr. STEVENS. We do not want to pass any idle act. We do not want to pass any act unless you can show that it is necessary, and it seems to me you can get your relief some other way.

Mr. SCHILLING. I confess

Mr. STEVENS. This Congress has not any right to adjudicate the claims of the State of Illinois as to this land. We can not do that. All that we can do is to preserve the rights of the United States or to control the rights of the United States in that property. That is all we can

do. Now, what rights we have are disputed, evidently, by the State of Illinois. Mr. Walker is here to notify us that they dispute our claim to a reversion, and whatever claim we have is disputed as to extent and as to title. Now, with that dispute, and an act such as you ask, if concurred in by the State of Illinois, it would be an abandonment by them of that portion of the canal, clearly and expressly, and it would make acute the expression between the United States and the State of Illinois as to that portion of the even-numbered sections. You are asking them to abandon that section of the canal, and I do not believe they will do it.

Now, in view of that, is it not the easiest way about, where that oddnumbered section is open to you, to run your sewer down that section? Mr. SCHILLING. That may be the solution of it; but of course, being governed by such legal counsel as I took before leaving Chicago, and then coming to this city and seeing the opinion rendered by General Davis and the report of Major Riché, it all tends toward the thought that I had come here with, that the United States did have a reversionary right in those lands.

Mr. STEVENS. Another thing; you are asking us to decide prematurely, according to the statement of Mr. McCormick, as to whether or not there is an abandonment. Mr. McCormick claims that there is a practical abandonment. As to whether or not there is an actual abandonment is another proposition. Congress is always reluctant to disturb existing conditions. Now you are asking us to rush in and disturb conditions prematurely when it does not seem to me that you show a necessity for it.

Mr. SCHILLING. I can only repeat again that such counsel as I have had, and that seems to have been confirmed by General Davis and Mr. Riché, has been to the effect that the United States did have a claim; and that being the case, we thought we could remove such a legal barrier as any property owner might raise by securing a permit that would not prejudice the interests of either the United States Government or the State of Illinois in the Illinois and Michigan Canal.

Mr. STEVENS. We would not yield any claim of the United States under any circumstances; that much we will not concede.

Mr. SCHILLING. Here is a dispatch which I sent, wishing to be backed up while here in the city, and showing the urgency of the matter I am speaking of. I would like to read this dispatch [reading:]

JOHN A. MAY, 203 City Hall, Chicago, Ill.:

WASHINGTON, D. C., February 4, 1907.

Ask mayor to wire Secretary of War Taft to give aid consistent with the interest of the National Government for remedial legislation that will enable us to construct the Western avenue and Kedzie avenue sewers through the Illinois and Michigan Canal.

Hittell gone to Chicago to-day. Sewer problem for us. Me to stay. Letter follows. GEO. A. SCHILLING.

So that at no time have I ever requested anything that would make you gentlemen feel that I am calling on you to abandon any interest that you have.

Now, that is the position we are in. I can only say to you gentlemen of the committee, and to you, Mr. Walker, and to you, Mr. McCormick, representing these other two bodies in our State, I representing the city of Chicago, that our citizens in this district are sweating blood for relief. They want it, and they ought to have it; and if this

committee can issue such a permit, and have it passed, as will leave intact the interests of both the United States Government and the State of Illinois, I should like very much for it to do it. This sewer proposition has been pending in our department for some seven years, and it is because of such things as this that our board has been prevented from putting through the improvement.

Mr. STEVENS. It seems to me that you do not keep on very good terms with Colonel Walker or the sanitary district.

Mr. McCORMICK. I have no objection to such a permit.

Mr. WILSON. I would have none.

Mr. WALKER. The effect of constructing the sewer will be to destroy the canal. The top of his sewer, according to his own statement, is going to be above the bottom of the canal.

Mr. SCHILLING. Yes, sir; that is right.

Mr. WALKER. I would have no right to consent to any such proposition for the State of Illinois, and the legislature would have no authority to consent to it. The only resolution that it seems to me would be at all competent or right would be an absolute abandonment by the Federal Government of any control over the situation, and that, I apprehend, you would not consider at all?

Mr. STEVENS. No. On the other hand. any possible act that we would pass would reaffirm any possible right that we had, and would notify the world that we did have such a right.

Mr. WALKER. Yes; and that ought not to be done unless there was a clear right to it.

Mr. STEVENS. It not only would not go through our committee, but it would not stand in the House for an instant. You want to look at the situation as it is. You do not want to fool yourself in this proposition. What you ask, Mr. Schilling, would require the practical abandonment of that section of the canal. According to Mr. McCormick's contention it is abandoned. That would be a form of abandonment; there is no question about that.

Mr. SCHILLING. Here, Mr. Chairman, is the unfortunate predicament of the city of Chicago with respect to these sewers. If the State of Illinois should abandon it, we would have no right of way if it should result in litigation between the Government and the State of Illinois as to who owns the odd sections, and we would be in the same position as we have been in right along.

Mr. STEVENS. You do not know whether you want the odd sections? Mr. SCHILLING. I know that, but of course you do not blame me for not knowing about that.

Mr. STEVENS. Yes; your attorney should have informed you. I blame you. I blame the officers of your local improvement board for not coming before us with a definite proposition as to what you know. Now, you do not know. It is the business of your attorneys to know just exactly, and they do not know. They do not know where they stand or what they want.

Mr. SCHILLING. You and Congressman Burton and one or two others read the statutes which have been passed, and you were all then of opinion that the statute passed in 1822 was not at all modified by the subsequent statutes.

Mr. STEVENS. We read them and supposed that the canal was constructed under the statute of 1822 as modified by the statute of 1827; but the Supreme Court of the United States, in construing those

statutes and the rights under them, has held that the statute of 1822, did not apply.

Mr. MCCORMICK: You were not familiar with that fact?

Mr. STEVENS. They never told us the facts.

Mr. SCHILLING. I did not know those facts. This morning is the first time we have been informed of this. I can only say that I went to the canal commissioner the other day and he called my attention then to the fact that they could not grant a permit for us to do this, and called my attention to the navigable feature of the canal, and that they were obliged to continue that, but he also called my attention to the statute that Mr. McCormick has read this morning and said that after this work had been completed, which is referred to in this statute, then the State will abandon the navigable feature of the canal from this point to that, and possibly then such a thing could be done.

Mr. STEVENS. Until that time there is no use coming before Congress. Mr. SCHILLING. Later it was held that the United States Government had some rights, and that it would be wise, in order to prevent such disagreeable litigation as might ensue, to get the permission of the United States Government to go through the canal, either upon condition or without condition that the State of Illinois should consent; but I am willing to have it provided that the State of Illinois should give its consent.

Mr. STEVENS. I do not think your attorneys have advised you well. You should have gone to the State of Illinois, and then, if they refused, there would have been no use in coming to Congress. We have no right until after they act. After they have acted and abandoned that stretch of the canal we may have some rights, and then we will see. what we can do. But until that time comes I do not see how we could do anything about it. I am speaking with reluctance, but it does not seem to me you are in a hopeless situation, but it strikes me you have another avenue of relief.

As to this permit, the Secretary of War has reported strongly against it, and there is not a member of the committee who would vote for it, and it would not pass through the House if they did, and I think to ask for such a thing now would be premature. That is my opinion. Mr. Lovering can tell you what he thinks about it.

Mr. SCHILLING. Of course if that can not be granted, I have nothing more to say about it.

Mr. LOVERING. I do not think it is possible to do anything at this session.

Mr. SCHILLING. Then, of course, I have nothing more to say. As to the urgency of the need of these sewers, I suppose you are all convinced.

Mr. STEVENS. Oh, yes.

(At 12.20 o'clock p. m. the committee adjourned.)

CHICAGO, February 6, 1907.

Mr. GEORGE A. SCHILLING

(Care of The New Willard, Washington, D. C.).

DEAR SIR: In regard to the proposition to drain the Western avenue sewer and Kedzie avenue sewer through a main sewer to run eastward on Thirty-seventh street, or some adjacent street, to the Chicago River, I beg to say that such a sewer would have to extend as far east as Ashland avenue or more.

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