Until the money for the bond issue should be available, the Hibernia
Bank authorized the Dock Board to draw against it on open account. It
only remained, then, to secure the authorization of the Capital Issues
Committee of the Federal Reserve Board, which controlled all bond
issues during the World War, to start the work. The grounds on which
the authorization was requested summarize conditions that make possible
a great industrial development in New Orleans, and will stand quoting.
They are:
"(a) Semi-tropical conditions, which make it feasible to work every day
and night in the year;
"(b) Admirable housing conditions which render it feasible for labor to
live under most sanitary conditions in houses closely proximate to both
the plants and the city, with sewerage and water connections, and with
street car transportation facilities to and from the plants and to and
from the amusement centers of the city;
"(c) Ample labor supply and satisfactory labor conditions;
"(d) Proximity to timber, steel and coal sources of supply with all
water as well as rail transportation facilities thereon;
"(e) State control of the canal facilities and operation of the same,
not for profit, but for the economical and expeditious development of
shipbuilding."
Two shipyards were established on the canal. They poured millions of
dollars into New Orleans. The tremendous tonnage built in the United
States during the war, and the slump in foreign trade that followed the
armistice, due to financial conditions abroad, have caused many
shipyards throughout the United States to close down, among them one of
these at New Orleans. The other one is now finishing its war contracts,
and will be more or less inactive until the demands of the American
Merchant Marine and business in general open up again. If they are not
used for shipbuilding, they can be used for ship repairing or building
barges. And it is obvious that the same conditions that made ship
building an economic possibility, will encourage other industrial
production, especially production that requires the co-ordination of
river, rail and maritime facilities. The Canal means millions of new
money to New Orleans, as its proponents said it would.
On March 12, the authorization of the Capital Issues Committee was
given. On March 15, the George W. Goethals Company, Inc., was retained
as consulting engineers on the big job. The services of this company
were secured as much for its engineering skill, proven by its work on
the Panama Canal, as for the prestige of its name. The Goethals
Company, co-operating with the engineers of the Dock Board, which did
the work, designed the famous lock and directed the entire job. George
M. Wells, vice-president of the firm, was put in active charge of the
work. General Goethals made occasional visits of supervision.
The dirt began to fly on June 6, 1918.
Before coming to New Orleans to take up his work, Mr. Wells, acting
upon instructions of the Dock Board, called at the office of the
Foundation Company in New York, whose engineer had already studied the
possibilities of establishing a shipyard on the canal, and guaranteed
an outlet to the sea by the time its vessels should be finished.
The river end of the site chosen for the canal consisted of low and
flat meadow land. There were a few houses helter-skeltered about, like
blocks in a nursery, but the principal signs of human life were the
cows that grazed where the grazing was good, and sought refuge from the
noonday beams of the sun under the occasional oaks that had strayed out
into the open and didn't know how to get back. The middle of the
site--several miles in extent--was a gray cypress swamp, with five or
six hundred trees to the acre, and always awash. The lake end was
"trembling prairie" marsh land subject to tidal overflow and very soft.
[Illustration: N. O. ARMY SUPPLY BASE]
[Illustration: BUILDING LAKE ENTRANCE]
With dredges, spades, mechanical excavators, piledrivers and dynamite
the work opened.
A great force of men began to throw up by hand, the levees that were to
serve as banks for the turning basin, the lock and other portions of
the canal. This levee would keep the liquid material, dredged out, from
running back into the excavation. The turning basin, 950 feet by 1,150
feet, was an expansion of the original industrial basin. Situated
several hundred feet from the lock, its purpose is to enable ships
entering the canal from the river, and passing through the lock, to
turn in, as well as to furnish a site for the concentration of
industries. The Foundation Company had in the meantime decided to
establish a shipyard on this basin; its engineers were on the ground,
and its material was rolling.
One dredge was sent around Lake Pontchartrain to commence boring in
from that end. This could not be done on the river end. The Mississippi
is too mighty a giant to risk such liberties. The 2,000-foot cut
between the river and the lock would have to be done last of all, when
the rest of the canal and the lock were finished, and the new levees
that would protect the city against its overflow, were solidly set. But
a few hundred feet from the turning basin, was Bayou Bienvenu, which
runs into Lake Borgne, part of Lake Pontchartrain, and one of the
refuges of Lafitte in the brave days when smuggling was more a sport of
the plain people than it is now with European travel restricted to the
wealthy. So through Bayou Bienvenu a small excavator was sent to cut a
passage into the turning basin, to allow the mighty 22-inch dredges to
get in and work outwards towards the lake and the lock site.
The problem was further complicated by the Florida Walk drainage
system, which emptied into Bayou Bienvenu, and by the railway lines
that crossed the site of the Canal.
These railways were the Southern Railway, at the lake end, the
Louisville & Nashville, at the middle, and the Southern and Public Belt
near the turning basin on Florida Walk. For them, the Dock Board had to
build "run-around" tracks, to be used while their lines were cut to
enable the dredging to be made and the bridges to be constructed.
For the drainage, the plans called for the construction of an inverted
siphon passing under the Canal, a river under a river, so to speak. In
the meantime, however, the drainage canal had to be blocked off with
two cofferdams, to cut off the water from the city and the bayou, and
enable the construction of the siphon between.
Additional railroad tracks, too, had to be built to handle the immense
volume of material needed for the work; roads had to be built for
getting supplies on the job by truck; the trolley line had to be
extended for the transportation of labor.
Week by week the labor gangs grew, as the men were able to find places
in the attacking line of the industrial battle. Great excavators
stalked over the land, pulling themselves along by their dippers which
bit out chunks of earth as big as a cart when they "took a-hold"; the
smack of pile drivers, the thump of dynamite, and the whistle of
dredges filled the air. Buildings sprouted like mushrooms; in the
meadow, half a mile from the nearest water, the shipyard of the
Foundation Company began to take form. It was the plan to finish the
Canal by January, 1920.