348 DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE FLORIDA CANAL

 dorse the Gulf-Atlantic ship canal across Florida as being sound, needful, and
 sufciently advanced in status, and a project that should be promptly con-
 structed In the public Interest.
 'The projects committee of the congress Is composed of an outstanding water-
 way leader from each of the 10 engineering divisions of the United States, and
 gave careful consideration to this project at open hearings. The committee
 Itself voted unanimously to recommend approval of the Florida canal, and its
 report was adopted without a dissenting vote by the convention, composed of
 delegates from 40 States, the District of Columbia, Alaska, and Puerto Rico,
 representing the Federat Government, States, cities, counties, State, municipal,
 and local governmental agencies, chambers of commerce, waterway associations,
 agricultural, labor, industrial, and trade organizations throughout the Nation.
 This project will strengthen the national defense, provide a permanent in-
 vestment which will increase the national wealth, greatly benefit industry, agri-
 culture, commerce, and labor, and afford protection to human life and property
 from the menace of the tropical hurricanes that visit the Florida Peninsula.
 Trom my own personal examination of the project, I am convinced that it is
 one of the most meritorious waterway projects ever undertaken by the Govern-
 ment, and that the expressed fears of its ill effects are groundless. I hope the
 Senate Committee on Commerce will not be misled by the insidious campaign to
 discredit and destroy our national waterways.
 "'Very truly yours,
 "'FRAnK R. R D,
 "'President, National Rivers and Harbor Congress.'
 "In addition to these, approval of the project has been formally expressed by
 70 Members of the United States Senate and the Governors of 36 States, repre-
 senting all of the major political parties.
 "Evidence has been presented in the form of letters from ship-operating
 concerns which indicates a lack of interest in or hostility to the project on the
 part of those particular companies. It seems appropriate to call attention to
 certain considerations which necessarily govern the evaluation of this kind of
 testimony.
 "Long-established and universally accepted custom has determined that the
 highest authority on questions of hazards to inland navigation, and the safe
 dimensions and conditions for harbors and inland waterways, is the Corps of
 Engineers, and the highest authority for sailing routes and for questions of
 time and distance is the Bureau of Navigation. When these two agencies unite
 in determining that a given route for navigation will be adequate and safe,
 and will require certain times and distances to be covered, it may be reasonably
 concluded that these determinations are correct. In the case of the present
 project, the Army engineers and the Bureau of Navigation have determined
 that it will be adequate and safe for navigation, and that it will effect certain
 savings of time and distance. These savings in time and distance may be, and
 have been, translated, with reasonable accuracy, into dollars and cents. When
 a ship operator states that he will not avail himself of these savings, he may
 be presumed, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, to be telling the truth.
 But when he denies the time and distance savings determined by these agen-
 cies, it is fair to assume that he is in error. Since the immemorial tendency of
 trade and navigation has been to take advantage of every factor which might
 Increase profit, It would appear that when a ship operator states that he will
 not avail himself of such factors, they are probably overbalanced by other fac-
 tors, not necessarily apparent, which apply to the interests of that particular
 operator. For these reasons, expressions, either favorable or adverse to a
 project of this kind, from ship-operating concerns, can only be taken as a guide-
 to the individual interest of those concerns, respectively, and cannot be made
 the basis for determining whether or not commerce in general will avail itself
 of the improvement or, for that matter, whether al commerce would not use
 the improvement once it came into existence, regardless of their preference for
 or satisfaction with the status quo. It is of record that there was a very con-
 siderable body of adverse opinion among ship operators with regard to all the
 great canals of the world prior to their construction, and it is also of record
that, with unimportant exceptions, commerce in general promptly availed itself
of these new routes when opened.
 "Ship-operating concerns may be divided into a number of classes, which
include the following:
 "(1) Those operators whose Gulf-Atlantic shipping is secondary to some
other phase of their business. Many companies falling within this group have-